Laundry Room Cabinets: What to Store Where

Cabinets hide a great deal, which is both their strength and their weakness. Behind a closed door a shelf can be perfectly arranged or a heap, and the room looks the same either way until you need the stain remover in a hurry.

If you already have laundry room cabinets, or are about to get some, the useful question is not how many you have but what goes on which shelf. A clear assignment for each one makes the inside as calm as the outside.

Upper cabinets: the home for laundry products

Wall cabinets do the most important job in the room. They are high, they close, and they can be latched, which makes them the right place for detergent, bleach, softener and stain remover. Every product goes in there in its original container, cap closed and label facing the door.

In a home where children live or visit, fit a latch and use it. A latch is a help and not a replacement for putting products back right after use and keeping an eye on small children. For more household detail, see the American Academy of Pediatrics page on laundry room and detergent safety.

Inside an upper cabinet, assign by frequency of use:

• Lowest shelf: the products you use for almost every load. This is the easiest shelf to reach, so it earns the everyday items.
• Middle shelf: occasional products and accessories such as mesh bags and a lint roller.
• Top shelf: light back-stock and things used a few times a year.

Keep the heaviest containers on the lowest shelf, where you lift them at chest height instead of over your head. The reasoning behind height, latches and grouping is set out in the guide to laundry detergent storage.

Base cabinets: bulky, light things

Base cabinets are at exactly the height a toddler explores, so they are the wrong place for laundry products unless the doors lock. What they suit is everything bulky, light and harmless:

• Spare baskets and a folded hamper liner
• Cleaning cloths and old towels for spills
• A bucket
• The clothespin bag and spare hangers
• Folded drying-rack accessories or an ironing blanket

Deep base cabinets swallow things. A pull-out tray or a pair of open bins used as drawers brings the back of the cabinet forward, so you are not kneeling on the floor with a flashlight.

The sink base cabinet

The cabinet under a utility sink is shaped by its pipes. Leave them, and the water shut-off valves, visible and reachable: this is a space someone may need to get into quickly.

Keep what lives there in a single lift-out caddy, such as scrubbing brushes, rubber gloves and a few cloths. One handle clears the whole cabinet in a second. Avoid packing the floor of the cabinet edge to edge, and do not hang anything from the pipes.

The cabinet over the appliances

A cabinet above the washer and dryer is well placed and often awkward, because you reach it across the depth of a machine. Before you assign anything to it, check that you can open the doors fully and see the shelves.

If you cannot reach it flat-footed, use a stable step stool placed in front of the machine. Never climb or kneel on a washer or dryer to get to a shelf. If even the stool leaves the top shelf out of comfortable reach, reserve that shelf for light, rarely used items, or leave it empty.

A tall cabinet for the long, awkward things

If the room has a tall cabinet, or space for one, give it to the items that never fit anywhere else: the ironing board, a broom and dustpan, a folding drying rack and a long-handled duster. Hooks or clips on the inside walls keep handles upright so they do not slide out when the door opens.

A shelf near the top can take the iron once it is fully cool. Freestanding tall cabinets should be secured against tipping with the restraint supplied or an anti-tip kit, following its instructions.

Organizers that work inside a cabinet

A few simple inserts make the difference between shelves you can use and shelves you rummage through.

• Shelf risers lift a back row so you can see two rows of original containers at once.
• Turntables suit bottles in a corner or a deep cabinet. A spin brings the one at the back to the front. Choose one with a raised rim.
• Open bins act as drawers. Group by type, slide the bin out, take what you need and slide it back.
• Door-mounted racks hold light, flat items only, such as a lint roller, a packet of mesh bags or a small notepad. Check that the door still closes without striking the shelves.
• Pull-out trays are most useful in base cabinets, where depth works against you.

Measure the inside of the cabinet, including the space lost to hinges and the face frame, before choosing any of these. For how to group the accessories and extras that share these shelves, see the guide on how to organize laundry supplies.

Keep a short list of what lives where

The drawback of closed storage is that nobody can see the plan. A short list fixes that. Write one line per shelf and tape it inside a door:

• Left upper, bottom shelf: everyday detergent, stain care
• Left upper, top shelf: back-stock
• Right upper: cloths, mesh bags, lint roller
• Base: baskets, bucket, old towels

The list helps other people in the house put things back, and it shows you at a glance when a shelf has drifted from its job.

When cabinets are not the whole answer

Cabinets are best for products and for anything you would rather not look at. They are less suited to things you reach for with full hands, such as baskets in constant use, or to damp items that need air. Many rooms work best with one or two closed cabinets for products and an open shelf or rail for the rest.

If you are still deciding between the two, the comparison of open shelves and cabinets in a laundry room weighs dust, visibility, cost and safety side by side.