Family Closet

I know, I know, you've probably never heard of it, and I know at first, it'll sound crazy.  See the problem is, for the last year and a half, I've been having some problems with the laundry.  Not only do we have a lot of it, as you can imagine 7 people do, but our laundry room is down stairs on one side of the house, and our bedrooms are upstairs on the other side.  So laundry involves me, going up and down the stairs like a pack mule.  Another issue is that in all honesty, the laundry wasn't making it upstairs, unless we were having company (about once a week).  I'd fold the laundry on the couch, and everyone would come down and start shuffling through...DISASTER! 

The other thing that wasn't workin' for us was our pantry, our pantry and our laundry room...same room!  We don't know who designed our house, but come on, laundry room/pantry...geesh! 

So, Scott and I have been discussing idea's, looking for storage solutions, talking about dumb butler or laundry shoot, etc.  Then I came across the family closet idea!  I made the suggestion to Scott, waiting for him to tell me I was nuts, but he liked the idea!  Well, one day I decided I was going to get started on it myself!  That morning, I dropped the kids off at school, and went to Walmart in search of storage bin options for my new family closet.  I walked in and right there in the center aisle I see stackable bins, regularly $5 on clearance for $1!!!  So, here is what my new Family closet looks like (mind you the floor still needs tile...and Scott, if you're reading this, the tile is in the garage, whenever you feel the motivation!) I love it!

Scott got these lower cabinets off a job site, they were getting thrown away (we are going to put a counter top on soon).  We took our pantry shelves out (there were two rows), and put a closet shelf in place of the top one.  Then bins on top, my $1 bins!  And under the cabinets, more of my stackabe $1 bins. In the drawers I have belts, hats, bows, accessories, etc.

I've got two laundry baskets, one for dark and one for lights...don't mind Ava, she's sorting.

And on the other side of the room, my washer and dryer...and I hang dry clothes on that rack.  At some point I can also add more bins on that shelf if we need extras, but for now we still have a few empty in the lower cupboards. 

So, all that space we had for our food was now gone...yikes!  So I moved some stuff around in the kitchen, still wasn't quite cutting the mustard.  Then it hit me!  I had a cabinet upstairs that would match our woods downstairs! 

Cans, dry food, box food baking, etc...

And snack foods in here!  So, the total cost of what this project cost was less than $30!  Lovin' it!