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htrinh

Laundry room design with fixed laundry chute position

3 months ago

Help me figure out how best to set up these laundry room cabinets! I have a large family and sort the clothes to wash them. My thought was I'd also have to store laundry basket here somewhere to carry folded clothes back upstairs. (I fold on the couch).


My first question is, would you empty the chute into a cabinet or have the clothes travel through the cabinet to drop into a basket on the countertop? If clothes empty into cabinet, is a basket needed in there also to hold them? Or do without a basket and if I open the cabinet and some falls out, so be it?


dimensions of wall being laid out (Black rectangles are roughly for design 2):




Concerns with each layout:

Picture 1: The center tall cabinet would contain the clothes and have to be a little wider than the two to either side of it (roughly 18 inches and 15 inches). Is it creating a tight, unusable counter corner? Maybe not enough counter space?



Picture 2: Chute comes down into two cabinets but a slope is created inside them to drop all the clothes into the tall cabinet. Would lose unknown about of usable space in the shorter cabinet for the chute. But would have more connected counter space. Contractor is more hesitant about this design (though will make anything work) and smaller cabinets would have to increase in depth to 15 inches.


Picture 3: Make all cabinets short but for consistency make them all 15 inches deep, though they would still have to be different widths. Clothes could either drop into cabinet or go through cabinet to basket sitting on counter. Potenially more counter space. Basket on counter might look messier or could be more of a reminder to constantly sort? Concerned short cabinet might not be enough space to hold clothes until I get around to sorting.



Picture 4: Chute cabinet is the only one that is tall/deep. Is it weird to permanently break up the counter and cabinets like this?


Comments (12)

  • 3 months ago

    In my previous house the laundry chute emptied into the upper section of a floor to ceiling cabinet in the laundry room. I found a canvas pop-up hamper that fit perfectly in the space and the dirty clothes fell right into it. I would then pull the full hamper out and let it drop to the floor. An elderly/frail person might of had issues pulling it down from chest/shoulder height.

    I had open shelves that held laundry baskets with labels for each member of the family. My only job was to wash, dry and fold. Family members had to drop their dirty laundry in the chute and then carry their own basket with clean clothes back upstairs and put it away in their closet.

  • 3 months ago

    This is my laundry chute. Easy to sort clothes, right in the open cabinet.


  • 3 months ago

    your inspo pictures are beautiful, anyone would love a laundry room like that.

    I too have a laundry shoot, it it enclosed/with a basket. I pull out all the white and leave the rest until I am ready for them. I only have a 30" folding countertop with a hanging rod above, works for me. Is there anyway you can have your hanging rod closer to the dryer, so you don't have so far to go? Same with a folding counter. Is the water and drain a fixed spot in the room?

  • 3 months ago

    The water and drain do have to stay in the area they are shown in. I rarely fold anything in the laundry room so im not worried about the counter proximity, it’s the camera angle is probably making the distance look greater than it is. The hanging bar over the sink is very close to the washer tower beside it, so close that the small cabinet to the left of the sink cant have a door. i could always put a folding hanging rack/bar on wall beside the other wash tower also

  • 3 months ago

    Does the chute have to be the center cabinet? If it can be the right-hand cabinet at the end of the run, do line it with metal, and have it land on the counter. You can open the door and pull the laundry out to sort.

    My mom had a good plan::there was a cupboard with three shelves. Each shelf held a plastic dishpan. As our clothes came out of the dryer, they were folded and went into each kid’s dishpan. It’s also where Mom put our mail or anything found around the house that belongs to that kid. The kids carried up their own contents.

    (we had a laundry chute, but it was next to the back stairs. I guess we defaulted to carrying our laundry to the chute on our way out, and just ended up carrying it down the stairs to the laundry room on our way out the back door.)

  • PRO
    3 months ago

    You’re juggling a tricky constraint with that fixed chute, but there’s still a lot of smart design you can do to make it functional and elegant.


    First, I’d ditch the idea of clothes spilling unchecked, use a basket or hamper that fits exactly inside that chute cabinet. A removable hamper that slides in/out keeps things tidy and accessible.


    Second, consider the chute landing location; if it lands behind doors or in deep cabinets, lines of sight and access matter. If you’re okay with that, it works; if not, maybe recess it slightly.


    Third, optimize counter and cabinet layout around the chute, leaving clear counter space on both sides for folding, sorting, and staging baskets. And overhead or side-mounted shelves or rods for hanging delicates can help. Lastly, safety & fire code compliance matters with chutes: use metal-lined, self-closing doors, minimal horizontal distance, and proper ventilation.

  • 3 months ago

    @bpath Option 2 would allow the clothes to end up in the right tall cabinet on the end but it would have to enter either fully into the middle cabinet or between the two cabinets. Sounds like your mom had a good system!

  • 3 months ago

    If it empties into a basket in an open space, what happens when the basket isn't there?

  • 3 months ago

    So the space is already allocated for the chute? The landing point is the question?

  • 3 months ago

    @bpath If the basket isn't there, then the clothes land on the counter. The location at which it goes through the ceiling is fixed, only option with the second floor configuration. So yes, landing point and it's configuration is what I'm trying to decide.

  • 3 months ago

    Given all that, I vote for #4. You don’t want the clothes to land in a basket on the counter, because one day someone will leave something they glued there to dry, or be repotting African violets, and someones jeans will land right on top.