Functional and Pretty Utility Room Organization

annisa

11 minutes ago

black half lite door opening into a utility room space where a broom, mop, and vacuum hang on a wall next to a white door. There's a small painting hanging above the mop.

Raise your hand if you have enough closets and storage in your house. You can’t see me, but I’m NOT raising my hand. If you’re in a similar situation, this means we get to activate creative mode to solve this problem! There’s no button to activate creative mode (I checked), but I can open the creaky door to our utility room to share some functional and pretty utility room organization ideas with you.

If you’ve been reading this website for a long time, thank you! But you might be wondering where our utility room is since I’ve never once uttered those words. It’s our back porch. In a recent moment of clarity, I realized that most people wouldn’t consider this space a back porch because of how we use it as a utility room. Furthermore, it doesn’t even look like a regular back porch. I can’t explain why it makes sense in person, but this is definitely a back porch. It could have something to do with it not being heated, cooled, or having actual insulation…you know, the bare minimum to be considered a proper room inside a house.

The Utility Room Storage Problem

Anyway, many of the things most people prefer to tuck behind a closed door in a utility room, like the broom and mop, I “get” to store out in the open. I know, I know. There are worse problems…like having to use the broom and mop.

Not only do we walk through this tiny 4 ft x 6 ft space multiple times a day, but it also has three doors, which is two too many. Two of the doors are half lites, so there really is no hiding the everyday things we store in here.

In addition, we’ve been doing some dirty work, fixing up our basement. (Read about that here.) The door to our basement is one of the three doors in this utility room/back porch.

The protective gear and shoes that we wear for this dirty work have nowhere to go except on the floor or draped over something else. Dirty gloves and shoes piled on the floor in a tight space is a recipe for a very cranky me.

We needed functional storage in this utility room to handle how the space was actually being used.

The Utility Room Storage Solution

Versatile metal wall baskets solved half the storage problem in our utility room.

I know baskets can’t solve all problems, but they can solve enough to weave me into their fan club. The basket dimensions were perfect for the space next to the exterior door, came with the hanging hardware, and the wire material means they can easily be wiped down. Not that they will, but the option exists.

I keep some gardening stuff in these baskets because it is conveniently located near the potted plants on the deck connecting to this space. There’s also our radon detector near the only outlet in the room. Plus, I designated a basket for gloves and masks, and lo and behold, I can actually find my gloves.

Now, the metal wall baskets don’t conceal the contents of each basket. It is unfortunate, and doesn’t make for a very pretty ‘tada’ moment if you’re a blogger, but I know my family. If they can’t easily see something, there’s a 100% chance they’ll ask me where it is. If they CAN easily see something, there’s a 50% chance they’ll still ask me where it is.

I’m working on improving those numbers, but it’s slow going.

DIY shoe pegs solved the other half of the storage problem.

I made shoe pegs to hang three pairs of shoes on the wall. These are the shoes we wear to do the dirty renovation work in the basement, and they have to stay here so we don’t track dirt all over the house. The shoe pegs on the wall keep the shoes off the floor so that we don’t trip over them, and if the floor is clear, it’s easier to clean. Funny how that works.

The shoe pegs are made with 1-inch wood dowels cut down to 2.5 inches long. I used double-ended wood screws to secure them to the wall.

If you make these, be sure to pre-drill a hole in the wood dowel before you try to insert the wood screw with pliers. It makes it easier and minimizes the chance that the dowel splits. If you don’t have a wood dowel to turn into pegs, guess what is dowel-shaped and the perfect diameter? A wood broom handle.

Of course, I decorated the utility room.

Doesn’t everyone decorate their utility room/back porch/entrance to the basement?

First, I finally took the time to remove the paint from the basement door hardware. This is technically undecorating or righting a previous decorating wrong, and I have a special crockpot to help with that task.

Second, I used a $1 thrift store basket to make a lamp shade that covers the ugly lightbulb situation. The light box isn’t in the ceiling, so this was the best idea I came up with that required no electrical work. I still need to switch the bulb out for a smaller one, but I’ll probably never do that.

Third, I hung a couple of paintings. The first is a petite landscape painting with an ornate frame that fits so nicely above the mop and broom because we’re fancy like that. The second one is a painting of our home on a flat stone that I’ll never stop gushing about because a friend painted it for us. It’s hung by the light switch and emergency switch for the boiler to try to make the uneven placement of those switches look intentional.

Never mind the fact that someone intentionally chose not to line those switches up evenly because they must be a fan of chaos.

I’m not a fan of chaos, so having this utility room better organized makes me breathe a little easier…or maybe that’s because I finished my dirty basement work and took my respirator off.

Either way, I hope this inspires you to add some functional and pretty organization to your utility room.

How is your utility room organization? Do you even have one? Or is it a closet? You can comment here on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via direct message on Instagram or Facebook.

Happy Organizing!