A Cluttered Laundry Room Gets Organized

A family’s dreary laundry room receives a much needed makeover, thanks to a few high-efficiency strategies.

Get a Load of This

This cheery yellow room, with the adorable children straight out of a detergent commercial (“Mmm, this towel smells so fresh!”), used to be a drab dungeon that Erin Zammett Ruddy, 32, a busy wife, mom, and freelance writer, tried to avoid at all costs. “We heaved dirty clothes down the stairs into the dark, not caring where they landed,” says Erin, the mother of Alex, two, and Nora, seven months. To help make the laundry room a place that she could tolerate or, even better, enjoy, Real Simple teamed up with makeover guru Chip Cordelli to get (one flight) down and dirty.