Although smaller homes and apartments are often constructed with washing machine and dryer outlets inside the kitchen to make better use of available space, this type of floor plan sometimes causes problems.
A kitchen laundry area may:
- Stand out like a sore thumb.
- Shrink floor traffic and work zones.
- Place dirty laundry near food and guests.
- Cause clean clothing to smell like odiferous foods.
Some people also use food storage cabinets for storing heavily scented detergent and dryer sheets. As some scents can permeate thin plastic packaging, this can cause some foods to taste “off." Some types of cabinet materials absorb these scents as well making the cabinets unusable for future storage of certain foods. Additionally, people often store these highly flammable products near a stove.
Kitchen Laundry Cabinet Solutions
You don’t need to build an extension laundry room to fix these problems. Instead, you only need to make a few simple changes to the area and how you use it:
- Install a hideaway cabinet: Whether you have a side-by-side or stacked washer/dryer combination, consider installing a custom box around your appliances with sliding, folding or swinging doors. A swing style design can also be built with doors that slide along the sides of the box so that they are out of the way while you're cleaning.
- Add a laundry closet: Order a custom box with extra shelving or a standalone storage closet with enough space for a folding screen that you can then pull out and place in front of the area when you don’t feel like seeing it or you’re entertaining guests. A laundry closet is perfect for storing cleaning products and a dirty laundry hamper. If you like to store clean towels or linens in the laundry area, you can also prevent dust and odor contamination by placing fabric items in sealed plastic totes inside the closet as soon as you pull them from the dryer.
- Modify or replace existing cabinets: When a kitchen does not have a lot of room, injuries and spills result because people often bump into each other or doors. To give yourself more space, install a smaller island, pullout under-countertop cutting boards or pull out trash and recycling bins.
With all of these options, an experienced kitchen cabinet maker can match any new cabinetry to existing cabinets or combine new cabinets with cabinet refacing to give your entire kitchen a brand new appearance!
