Today’s home buyers, the millennials, have a passion for simplicity. Because they work so hard in order to play hard, millennials like their home spaces to be simple, uncluttered, and functional. In this way, they feel less stressed and more relaxed. One room, however, that can feel anything but uncomplicated is the laundry. Home stagers tell us that the laundry area usually screams of chores that cannot be avoided in most houses, so a well-staged laundry room can seem to tone down the screams that dirty or still unfolded laundry can create.

Get rid of the clutter

As with all rooms in your house, your laundry is probably begging to be decluttered. For reasons as yet unknown to modern man, we tend to fill our laundries with bottles, bags, hedge trimmers and the occasional bag of charcoal briquettes that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. Maybe it’s our habit of situating laundries close to the back door to double as mudrooms? In any case, even before your home stylist arrives, your first job is to declutter your laundry.

Whether or not you plan to sell your home right away, you can benefit from a cheerier room. Take the time to examine carefully the items you have in this area. Do they have anything at all to do with washing clothes? In the alternative, if you use the space as a mudroom as well, consider ways in which you can separate the two functions and make them both a bit tidier. If there is no need for something in this space – which is usually small to begin with – either throw it away or store it elsewhere.

Brighten it up

Window-less laundries need all the light they can get. It’s impossible to see whether or not the mustard stain came out of Hannah’s school uniform when you’re working in a dark room. Use brighter bulbs and consider repainting the entire room, ceiling and all. A bright, white ceiling will reflect well even in a basement laundry. The rest of the room need not be white, but remember that your buyer might not like the colour you associate with a cheerful room.

Evaluate the storage situation

There is no resource in a house for sale more important than storage space. This can be especially true in the laundry. You need a place to store the laundry detergent, fabric softener and whitener, for example, but you may also need space for storing extra towels and Aunt Jane’s lace tablecloth. Is there a spare wall on which you could mount shelving or install a storage cabinet? Can you mount a rod for hanging clothes somewhere in the space? Making the entire place look functional and efficient is the key, according to Sydney home stagers.

Add a folding space

Having a place to fold and stack laundry is one of those little touches that make home-makers happy. Generally, laundry gets folded somewhere other than the laundry, such as the bedroom in the master suite, the kitchen counter or the sofa in the living room. When you can fold and stack on the spot, it simplifies the life of the worker bee and keeps him/her from lugging loads all over the house before the clean clothes are finally distributed.

Sort those brooms and mops

Your millennial home buyer doesn’t want to have to give much thought to even the little tasks that are part of owning a home, so everything you can do to add an element of organisation to this hard-working space will pay off in the end. Brooms and mops, for example, if they cannot be stuffed into a broom cupboard, look much more acceptable hung like soldiers on a pegboard parade ground. (While big, bright labels – Broom, Mop, Vacuum – are not necessary, a note of whimsy is always welcome.)

Making a few changes to your laundry and/or mudroom can make your home feel less closed in and more user-friendly. Your home stagers will give you more tips and tricks to make utility areas brighter and more fun to work in while you wait for that new, uber-organised millennial buyer to fall in love with your property.