The great laundry flood of 2017

‘Mum, the laundry is flooding’ are not the words you want to hear when you’re on your way home from a relaxing weekend away.

We arrived home to find our daughter wasn’t exaggerating when she said water was gushing out of the washing machine tap, which by the way, is located inside the laundry cupboard. 

My daughter walked into the room in time to see a trickle coming out of the bottom of the cupboard door and when she opened that door she was met with a mighty deluge.

The empty cupboard with a drip tray in place - waiting for the plumber to fix the taps

Luckily the plumber was already booked to fix the bathroom leak (that’s a whole other story) so we were only without the washing machine for a day. Meanwhile I was faced with the soggy contents of the laundry cupboard.

Nothing like a messy job to bring you back to earth with a thud! We’d only just celebrated two years in our new house so figured there wouldn’t be many excess items to clean or cull. Boy, was I surprised at what we’d managed to build up in that time.

It was time to don my professional organiser hat and get to work. Water damaged items went straight into the bin. Empty bottles were sent to recycling and I dried and categorised the rest.

I then grabbed some boxes from the stash I keep on hand for clients. Three mango boxes, an iPad box and the box my planner came in were the perfect combination.

This mango box was perfect for storing bottles and cans in my laundry cupboard

One box was for laundry detergent and associated products, another was for shoe cleaning supplies and the third housed the pets’ assorted brushes and combs. The final three contain other cleaning products and sunscreen.

And the beauty of the box system? The boxes are easy to lift out of the cupboard. so, everyone in the household can easily find what they're looking for and return it to where it should be when they've finished using it without creating a huge mess.

The great laundry flood of 2017 occurred in January and I'm happy to report the cupboard is still in tip top shape, give or take a bottle or two!

PS. Xena thoroughly enjoyed the laundry clean up. She couldn't decide whether to be in the cupboard or the boxes and finally settled in the laundry basket.