When Sabine and Alston Lopez were building their new colonial-style house in Kennesaw, Georgia, a big laundry room was part of the dream. Unfortunately it wasn’t the part that came true. During construction the Lopezes realized they had to reposition their three-car garage, which meant that half of their precious laundry room would be eaten up. And since last July, when the couple and their three children moved in, working in the tiny, six-by-seven-foot space to keep all five of them in clean clothing has been a daily frustration.

The room was so cramped, says Sabine, a 40-year-old project manager for a design firm, that “I dropped clothes on the floor every time I did the laundry.” The jumbo containers of detergent and dryer sheets that she kept on top of the washing machine also often ended up tumbling to the floor.

Sabine did have a nice, long wire shelf for supplies — too bad she couldn’t reach it. The only place to hang clean clothes was over the sink, into which they would sometimes fall and get wet. Worse, the doors on the front-loading appliances opened into each other. “It was awkward getting in there,” says Sabine. “And I couldn’t fold laundry as I took it out of the dryer because the door was in the way.”

Aside from a little appliance-switching magic from a local handyman, making the small room feel bigger and work better was mostly a matter of seeing the space with a fresh eye and employing a few inexpensive organizing devices. Here’s how the rest of the cleanup unfolded.