Organizing a utility room for functionality and storage space - Part One -

Whenever you designate a space in your home as a utility room, you run the risk of using the space for too many purposes. It becomes a storage space, a workshop, pantry, freezer space, wine cellar and laundry room.

And, as new items are brought into the home, older items are shuffled into these general use spaces and bury pre-existing items. It becomes a dark and dank corner of the home where objects go to be forgotten.

Even if the room was once functional, it soon becomes impossible to find or do anything in the space. The room becomes an unproductive and unappealing wasteland.

In the next 3 posts we will look at organizing a utility space so that it meets your storage needs and becomes a functional work space.

Posts:

Part 1 Define the purpose of the room.

Part 2 Designing and organizing the space using online applications

Part 3 Practical practices when implementing your organization plans and goals.

Part 1: Defining the purpose of your utility space

It is easy to define most spaces in your home. That room is the den, that is the play room and that is the master bedroom.

It is critical to stamp a permanent purpose to a utility space. Defining a room will focus your organization assignment and your brain will automatically decide what should go into that room and what should not.

When you use general terms like “utility” room or “junk” drawer, you are inviting people to store any object into that space.

It is if you went into a kitchen and saw a dollhouse or a dishwasher in a bedroom.

Two problems arise with this scenario. First, it is impossible to know what is stored in that space and second, useless and surplus items fill up much needed storage space.

If you define it, you own it.

The process of defining a space:

For example, let us imagine that we are creating a laundry and storage space in a utility room.

After you define the room as a laundry and storage space you need to make sure that the area is going to meet your needs.

It is about optimization, so you do not want to undersell or oversell your definition of the space.

Questions you need to ask yourself:

• What activities am I going to carry out in the room?
• Do I have enough room to do everything I want with the space?

The questioning step is critical because it will save you time and money.

For example:

Laundry rooms require:

Clothing Storage Area Long Term (children’s clothes) Short Term (winter/summer wear) Laundry Area Dryer Washer Air Drying Space Ironing Folding Detergents Sorting

General Storage Area Small Pantry (dried goods) Camping Equipment Fixtures Heater Furnace Basin Utility Hook-ups

All these activities and items need a defined space so that the room remains functional and comfortable.

Visualization

Questions and brainstorming give you clarity and purpose in what you want to accomplish.

Use this clarity to visualize what the optimum layout would look like.

Take all of the variables into account. Assign spaces and objects around the room until it feels comfortable and practical.

Foresight will allow you to avoid many of the roadblocks associated with ad hock execution of a job. Not only is the placement of an object important, so is the ability to get to the object or move around it.

Influenced by aesthetics, people buy bedroom sets and find that the furniture matches the décor but leaves little room for movement around the furniture. This includes a lack of space to open drawers or get dressed in the morning.

Nevertheless, each individual is different, some people find tight spaces claustrophobic, and others find them cozy. With this in mind, minimize outside influences when making design choices.

Visualizing tips:

• Imagine the room is empty. No fixtures, shelving or furniture. Start from square one.
• Depending on the level of changes you can make to the room, introduce the fixtures and other existing objects in the space.
• Think about the storage. Place boxes and objects in their defined zones.
• Visualize horizontally and vertically, so that you can maximize the space.
• Do not forget to consider the amount of reaching and bending you will have to do to carry out your activities.
• Use intuition to decide how comfortable you will be in this imagined area and keep thinking about it, until it feels right.
• Envisage the activities you are going to carry out in every particular zone.

After taking the time to visualize the space, you will know if your initial plan is going to work. If it is not going to work, you may need to redefine the space

Things to consider when you develop a plan of action

The key to any plan is to stay calm.

Renovations and organizing a home can bring out the worst in people. Feeling overwhelmed will lead to shortcuts or the abandonment of a project.

Work within your own schedule, and initiate a project when you know you have the proper resources and time to carry it out.

Using the sale of a home, visiting relatives, or vacation time as an excuse to complete a project will lead to frustration and leave you open to costly oversights. You have to use reasonable time frames and create time buffers by overestimating the time it will take to complete the project.

Also, leave enough space around furnaces and water heaters so that a technician can safely and comfortably work on a piece of equipment.

Sketching up a rough plan

Now is the time to put a plan on paper.

The sketch does not have to be to scale, it is going to serve as a rough and changing guideline as you work out your plan.

Some tips for the sketch

• Graph paper makes marking out zones in the room easy and clean. If you do not have any graph paper, you can print up some at http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
• Put as much detail as you can in the sketch. This includes doorways, fixtures and labeling the activity and storage areas.

Continuing in our next post ...

We will look at measuring out our space and deciding what shelving, hooks, or storage bins need to be added to the room to maximize functionality and space.