Laundry Room Storage System

[nelsonic]

At present, the laundry room is a mess: ( a case of #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce ... )

All surfaces are covered in products, which, while many related to laundry are not organised ...

There are duplicates and bulk-buys of products dumped on the shelf that was meant for the second machine:

And the shelf where "kitchen things" should be stored is a smorgasmess of products:

The original shelf above the machines for the laundry products is not used
because it is too high up for our 1.5 m Tall cleaning lady ...

This is not a system #113 anyone can follow it's chaos. 😕
There is nothing written down (printed & laminated) for how it should all work. 🤷‍♂️
Inês has to verbally explain it to people how to do laundry. 🗣️ ⏳

Verbally explaining things is fine if someone has never done laundry before in their lives!
But if they have used a different machine before, then the instructions are simple!

Laundry Instructions (Outline)

1. This is the machine you should use.
2. The laundry detergent is stored in this place.
3. Use X ml of detergent for a large load, Y ml for a medium and Z ml for a small wash
4. Pour the detergent into this compartment
5. Place the laundry in the tub and close the door
6. Select the settings on the dial(s) / button(s)
7. Start the machine
8. Start a timer on your phone corresponding to the time displayed on the machine so you get your laundry as soon as it's done.
9. Hang your washing on the drying racks on veranda upstairs (yes, even if it's raining they will dry!)
10. Once your laundry is 100% dry (e.g. in summer when it dries in a few hours) or 90-95% dry (e.g. winter when it's cold), take off the line. if your laundry is not fully dry, then use the drying machine. We don't use the dryer to dry from 100% wet to 0%, we always hang the laundry on the line/rail first to extract most of the moisture for free before using the machine to remove the bulk of the moisture otherwise we are wasting energy.

It might not seem like a waste to use a couple of kWs to dry laundry.
But multiply it by 3-4 loads a day (20 people in the house) and you're wasting *MEGAWATTS per year!!
Our energy may be renewable but it's not "Free"!
And if we waste it, other customers can't use it and thus more coal/gas is burned!! 🔥
https://www.energysage.com/electricity/house-watts/how-many-watts-does-a-clothes-dryer-use/

Todo

• Measure the available storage area
• Decide how to most effectively use the area.
• Build shelves that work with the depth available
• Mount them in place.
  • Linear Guide Rails: Linear Guide Rail workshop#167 #SideQuest 👷
• Create a hyper organised SYSTEM that anyone can follow and never have clutter/mess again!

[nelsonic]

Detailed/precise measurements captured with lasers ⚡️

[nelsonic]

Rail distance measured with laser:

[nelsonic]

Busy building a prototype rail. 🧑‍🏭⏳

[nelsonic]

Can you see where it's going?

We're about to have an insane amount of storage for all laundry & kitchen items! And most importantly a system that anyone can follow. 🤞🏼

[iteles]

Love it. This solves the problem so well!!
I'm surprised the walls will hold this much weight - even the steel rail let alone the wooden shelves and all the weight ontop.

[nelsonic]

We did detailed study of the walls before embarking on this adventure. 🕵️‍♂️🔍
Each rail can hold 200kg of products comfortably. The wall mount is good for 400kg. It's all carefully over engineered to withstand severe punishment from curious children.

#PleaseTest

[nelsonic]

For anyone following along, the rail is an IPN 80. It's 1960mm long and can hold 800kg in the center. We tested it by hanging from it. Not even the slightest flex. It's mounted using custom fabricated steel plates welded to each end and hardened steel screws in holes drilled into granite & brick walls. Again, over engineered. Zero concern of failure. 👌

[nelsonic]

Finished painting the yellow one:

It has carefully made-to-measure shelves to store specific kitchen items. Each shelf will have a clear label on it and it will be immediately obvious where everything is. 👌

Painted it in the office so that it's out-of-the way from the workshop and can dry without any dust. Paint is non-toxic water-based.

Next I'm going to prepare the linear rail for the next 3 units as an epic batch. This will mean we can finish mounting them all faster. 🤞🏼

Very keen to get this finished so we can have one room in the house that is hyper organised. ⏳🙏

[nelsonic]

Going to make the tolerances on the runners much tighter now that I've tested the first one. 👌
Still welcome more testing from others... 🙏

[nelsonic]

Busy preparing the runner for the second rail which will be for the green storage box:

just going to well it up now before heading to bed so it’s ready to assemble tomorrow.

thanks @MikeRund for helping me to prepare the pieces. 👷‍♂️👌

[nelsonic]

Second storage unit is up! 🙌

thanks to @MikeRund and @d4vcsj for help! 🙏

P.S: Yes, the smoke detector was factored into the planning and the unit does not impair its functioning. Don’t worry. There’s a plan. 😉👌
https://youtu.be/NsUFBm1uENs 🏧

[nelsonic]

Yesterday evening after work, I made the runners for the third rail/box:

Today I’m going to di the 4th set:

I’ve been a lot more systematic with tolerances on these so the will glide better than previous iterations! 👌

still comfortably on-track to get the last two storage units installed before @d4vcsj leaves on the 18th. ⏳🤞🏼🎄

[nelsonic]

Managed to get all the runner welding done this morning before work day started:

this is by far the most difficult & time-consuming part of the project. 👌

[nelsonic]

Today I managed to prepare all the pieces for the next two rails:

but when I try to go in the laundry to do measurements and draw markings on the walls in preparation for installing the next two rails, I see that the products have all been returned to the platform/shelf that we had carefully cleared on Tuesday in preparation for getting this work done … ⏳😢

@iteles there appears to have been a miscommunication somewhere along the line … 🤷‍♂️
Could we please not put anything in this area for the next week so I can get my work done in the extremely limited time I have available. 🙏🙏

[iteles]

You got it.

[nelsonic]

We finished installing the other two running storage units on Dec 17 2024:

I just spaced on updating this issue! 🤦‍♂️

@iteles could you please share some feedback so we can fix any snags and call this closed? 🙏

currently the storage units are not being used, there are still products in the area where the second washing machine needs to return to:

what can we do to move all the products to their new organised home? 💭

[iteles]

This was done whilst I was busy packing everything for the festive season away a few days later and we've only been back a handful of days (which have been busy) so I haven't had a huge amount of time to test everything. Certainly no time to pack anything away 🤷‍♀️

It looks really awesome and I'm so excited to have all this storage!

Constructive Feedback

1. The yellow box is side-heavy which means the green and yellow boxes scrape against each other.
   This is only a problem because it makes them way harder to pull out and of course with time will wear quite a bit.

I originally thought it was because the yellow box was weighted too heavily on the back side because of all these bottles:

But in actual fact I think it's because of the weight of the wooden structure on the front side which is pushing that side down and pushing the whole box back towards the green one.

I was surprised that the weight of all those heavy bottles wasn't enough to counter-act this weight on the front. Adding more weight with products isn't really a great system though.

2. The mechanisms aren't well-oiled yet and pulling out the boxes is very noisy for upstairs and a little jumpy for the red box especially.

Just adding more of the oil used so far is not the solution though in the first couple of days I noticed some oil stains on some of the clothes that were in the laundry room awaiting washing (agree, this is not the correct system anyway) and it turns out the oil was pooling on the rails and dripping:

3. A minor point, we should add some foam to the edge of the boxes that touches the wall.
   Even myself being the most interested party in being careful, found I didn't always judge the distance properly and sometimes the boxes hit the wall at the back pretty hard which will quickly cause unnecessary damage.

4. wont-fix: Worth noting that when the blue box is open, it largely covers the light.
   Given this is a windowless room, even in the daytime this means that products in this box can't be seen as easily. Not something to 'fix' but something for me to be aware of when deciding what to put in this box 👍

[nelsonic]

@iteles "very noisy" is highly subjective. Did you measure it with a decibel meter? We have one in the office. 🎤
Crucially, did you measure it from other rooms? How often will the boxes be opened/moved per day? 🤷‍♂

[iteles]

I didn't measure with a decibel meter.

I packed everything away last night and labeled with masking tape temporarily whilst we figure out if these are the most useful spots for things. Will make permanent labels in a month.

Using the green one for storage of things for the kids, a mix of:

• Trays and baskets which I always end up having to traipse up and down 3 floors for like 8 times per materials rotation
• Things that require the kitchen for usage: play dough making ingredients, food dyes, etc.