I need a floor plan and do you mean all guests come through the laundry to your home? I think you need most of this stuff to have a home in the garage not in the laubdry space that is barely workable. But I need a floor plan all measurements marked and also is the garage heated or at least do you live where it is warm? This would be agreat mud room with the W/D not in there at all.

I agree but we have no other space for the W/D other than the basement and I don't see that happening at this stage in life. The garage is barely heated and unfortunately, we live in a cold climate in the winter. The room is 130" by 73". 94" from window wall to garage door and 96" from window wall to open doorway.

What is your budget? Is it high enough to move the plumbing lines a bit, and the baseboard? Or are you just looking for furniture ideas?

You said one closet is for coats, but I see coat hooks on the wall. Could you move some of your coats up to bedrooms? Keep the coat hooks, but use the closet for better storage. Consider removing the door entirely, and putting in a built-in style shelving with racks below for shoes, table top for purses and bags, shelves above that can hold baskets that hide other essentials. Now your guests have a place to put their shoes and purses.

Could you move the washer and dryer to sit underneath the window? Then put some shallow shelving underneath the cabinets. Or move the coat hooks there, along with some hooks for a broom, mop, and dustpan.

How about cube shelving? I think it should have an open back since you have a baseboard heater on the wall across from the W/D, but this would organize some of the items in a more attractive way.

https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/aprilyn-cube-bookcase-gnt22120.html?piid=73473835

There are many different varieties of this on Wayfair and elsewhere.

We have a bit of a budget for lower costs fixes. Not a bad thought for removing the door and making it a built in storage. We have coats both in the closet and on the hooks...but we can probably remove a few. The width under the window isn't big enough for the W/D to fit under but it would be great to get them out of the way.

I love @decoenthusiaste idea for the two closets. I would also want to separate the laundry from the entry if this is used as a main entry. Depending on the budget I would add a wall with a barn door or pocket door to close the laundry off from the rest of the entry.

I have lived in small spaces and know it is hard to keep them organized and to find space for everything, but I am wondering how many people are living in the home and if it is necessary to have a dozen pairs of shoes in the entry and 6 coats on hooks when their is a coat closet.

If you combine the two closets into a mudroom/locker situation, you can use the wall where coat hooks and shoes are now for shelves or cabinetry that stores the stuff in your second closet- hopefully more efficiently. I know it's just shuffling around, but a deep closet isn't what you need if you're storing brooms, extra toilet paper, etc.

I'd start by going through every item in the room and deciding what MUST stay there. I'm guessing - footwear and clothing for the season, and laundry cleaning products. If even if a quarter of the items in the room can go elsewhere, that will make your job so much easier.

Focus on finding other places in your house for out-of-season footwear and clothing, other cleaning products, and I don't know what else.

Could out-of-season clothing and footwear for each person go in a shallow box under their own bed? I have found that heavy shallow produce boxes (e.g. the kind that bananas come in) slide perfectly under our beds and some beds can hold more than one. Your garage may be able to hold some items. We have wire storage shelves that hang from the garage ceiling, for boxes of seasonal items. Or a tall stack of clear bins can hold a lot of stuff in a corner of the garage or on a high shelf.

In our front closet, each person has a milk-crate type plastic box for their shoes. These could slide under a bench. In winter, wet boots go on a tray which takes a bit more room. Each person has a bankers box for their mitts, scarves, hats etc. These sit on a shelf over the coats. Your solution will depend on whether everyone can reach higher storage, or if you have little ones.

Great suggestions and ideas everyone! Thank you for taking the time to post. I definitely need to declutter and look into the idea decoenthusiasta mentions. The second closet holds the vacuum, art supplies and a bucket of household tools that get used frequently (hammer, screwdrivers, tape measure) so some of that would be hard to relocate (in particular the vaccuum). This house has just two other single door closets besides the BR closets. One is our game closet and the other a linen closet so storage is limited. I'll have to think if there are other places we can create a new storage closet or space throughout the house.

Personally, my closet interiors would never look as tidy as the ones above, so I would prefer to have doors to close. The inside of a door (even your cabinet doors) is a great place for easy to reach storage. You can attach one or 2 clear pocket organizers to the inside of each closet door. Or attach study shallow boxes to any hollow-core door with the right butterfly fasteners.

Storage solutions can become expensive but dollar stores are a great place for boxes and bins, either to stack or to attach to a wall hook. Heavy ziploc bags can let you organize art supplies and then you can toss them all into one bin without making a mess. Clear plastic tote bags can be hung on a hook, either in a closet or on the wall as alternative to a box for hats, scarves, mitts.

Be sure that you add shelving to fully use the upper part of the room, or the closet, especially for things that are only used by adults who can reach it e.g. the bucket of tools. Adding a small ladder can open a world of high-up storage, and the ladder can hang on the wall.

Here are some useful items to help you make better use of vertical and wall space,

No need to relocate heavily used items - if following @decoenthusiaste's suggestion.

Just purchase a pretty closed cabinet that will house the vacuum cleaner and tools. This would go where the washer and dryer are currently.

How about something like a decorative screen to sort of obscure the laundry area? You'd put it where the chair is across towards the shoes. It's hard to get a feel for your space but look into sliding hanging room dividers and see if any of those might work.

And yeah...more shoe cubbies would be nice. Maybe with a bench on top to hold baskets while doing laundry or to take the place of the chair for boots.

Just purchase a pretty closed cabinet that will house the vacuum cleaner and tools. This would go where the washer and dryer are currently.

And where would the washer and dryer go??

I hated the task of going through things and trying to figure out what to keep and what to get rid of and didn't seem to ever get past the hump of having too much stuff with a low storage home. I incorporated a few things that really helped.

I bought a bag of tiny rubber bands (like the ones you would use on a kids ponytail) and a bunch of post it notes, gallon and 2 gallon baggies, masking tape, clear tape and sharpies.

Around the first of the year I put a rubber band on each of the hangers in my closet, put the clothing that was in drawers in a few baggies. Appliances and things that plug in got a rubber band on the cord, pots and pans either got a rubber band on the handle or pots got a post it note in the pot. Spices all got marked with the year on the lid and a piece of clear tape sealing the lid. Things like cookie cutters, baking supplies . . . got put in baggies.

Usually did one room each weekend for several weeks at the beginning of the year.

Then through the year as I laundered items or used items I took them out of their bags, took off rubber bands, took out the post it note . . .

The next January I took all the items I didn't use and put everything in boxes and stored the boxes in my garage. In June I donated all the items I hadn't pulled out of the boxes.

After a few years of doing this I got my home to a manageable state and then I implemented a one in one out rule. If I want new shoes I have to get rid of a pair of shoes. If I want new jeans I have to get rid of a pair of jeans/pants. I still go through my home early each year and see where things may have grown out of control (not perfect at the one in one out in every area of my life) and if need be, I bag or mark items knowing that a year from now I should get rid of the excess.

I also found that chrome shelving and totes made better use of closet space where I didn't need to hang clothes was excellent storage.

And where would the washer and dryer go?? @terezosa / terriks

They can go in the newly designed mudroom closet or as stackables(build cabinet around them) next to the pretty closed cabinet.

That could work or I like the idea of the W/D under the window. That is why a to scale floor plan posted here is a good idea. The measurements all marked clearly. Our kids took all theri bags and stuff to their rooms when we lived in crapmed spaces one pair of shoes and one coat at the entry the rest up to the bedrooms . As for art supplies , tools etc find another place for those. The tools in the garage still handy .

Some free neatening- up ideas:

- remove stickers from washer and cabinet front

- move big bottle and bag to one of the closets

- move both plastic and wicker baskets to one of the closets. If they don't fit there, hang up the plastic one in the corner where one of the clothes hook racks is. Move that clothes hook rack where the small framed print is.

- run the curtains through the wash in spring and fall.

If you have DIY skills, recover the seat on the shoe-taking-off chair with a new fabric or easy care vinyl you love.

You might try a clothing storage method that I use in my bedroom. One closet section has 2 hanging bars, one above the other, for shirts, jackets etc. The bottom row of clothes goes right to the ground so the upper bar isn't that high up. You need to measure your longest items to make sure they don't drag on the ground. Another part of my closet has a bar higher up for dresses, very long jackets etc. It has storage on the floor underneath it.

You could do a double bar for one closet which should hold most of the jackets. Hats and mitts, and maybe some shoes, in hanging pockets on the inside of the door. The other closet could have a bar at the normal height for hanging longer coats that don't fit the double-bar closet. That's where you'd put your vacuum and maybe some room for other shelving on the side.

I know you said "simple", but someone else already mentioned combining closets together to create a recessed mudroom, so how about changing the 2 existing closets to a recessed open area for the washer and dryer. Remove the doors and dividing wall, recess the washer and dryer and install your upper cabinets. Then you could frame a new closet where the washer and dryer is with a drop zone right across from it on base heater wall. You could reuse your existing doors for the closet to save money by just changing them by using the doors without their frame and using the panels as a sliding door. You should have enough room both in depth and width in the closets for washer and dryer as most closets are at least 24" deep and the wall would be a minimum of 4". Also if your room is just over 6' wide, you would have room to add a 12" broom closet beside the washer and dryer.

As far as moving washer and dryer to the window wall, unless you have the plumbing run on the inside side of the drywall and not inside the wall itself, you can't do that in cold weather areas because your plumbing could freeze. In cold areas you only run plumbing on internal walls or frame a double thickness wall on outside walls to create a barrier to protect water lines.

I suggest you invest in a tool box. My SO says that was the just about most impressive thing about me; I had my own fully outfitted toolbox. As a designer and art consultant it was necessary, but we still return to it weekly here in the house. It doesn't have to be too big, and can be kept right outside the door to the garage, or under a bed or a bathroom sink. I don't know what kind of games (video or board) you keep in the game closet, but a storage coffee table might handle that chore. As for moving the W/D under the window, is it possible to do a bit of a bump out into the garage to get some width to accommodate them?

Such a small space and the creative ideas amaze me. Changing up the closet's interior layout to be more efficient is simple and the idea of making it either an open/closed mudroom or relocating the w/d there are genius. I will clear out what isn't necessary to stay and see what is left that needs accommodating or relocation if possible. Jennifer H.- awesome idea! I think many of us would have very little left since I KNOW we wear the same things over and over in this house! My game closet is packed (albeit neatly) but we are a board game family and are constantly going through it to keep it current.

This doesn't address your storage issues but is a thread about decorating a laundry room. You might find it interesting.

It's one of my favourite Houzz makeovers. It's a long thread so you can just scroll to right near end of the thread where she shows a few pairs of pictures "before and after". https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3792622/sad-ugly-laundry-room

Realized that I never posted the finished room.