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Laundry rooms tend to be dirty little secrets - raw spaces where clothes pile on the floor and washers and dryers stand alone.

The irony wasn’t lost on Helen Norman, who had cobbled together a bare-bones laundry area in her 1850s Maryland home. Tired of the inefficiency, she and her friend, designer Janna Lufkin, redesigned the space with loads of function. Lufkin designated areas for laundering, folding, ironing, air-drying, and storage.

“Everything seemed chaotic before,” Norman says. “Now, it’s a space I want to come into and treat with respect.”

With ideas that put everything in its place, laundry is a chore no more:

Under cover. Norman had a cabinet built to house her front-loading washer and dryer. The top is made of linoleum flooring to provide a durable work surface.

Out to dry. Tip-out drying racks are an alternative to a standing drying rack. And a quilt rack can augment wall-mounted racks.

Norman air-dries a lot of clothes and doesn’t iron much; space for those tasks was assigned accordingly.

Heavy wash. A shelf provides storage in the space above the washer and dryer. Detergents stored in clear, labeled jars allow Norman to gauge levels and prevent shelves from becoming a riot of packaging. (Store stain removers on a lazy Susan to keep them in reach and to catch drips.)

Story by story. A freestanding table offers storage. Norman’s two boys can grab clothes stacked on the top. The iron rests on a heat-resistant old enamel tray. Drawers below conceal mending supplies, extra dryer sheets, stain removers, and the inevitable pile of unmatched socks. Baskets are used to tote clean rags and towels to their proper rooms. Closed boxes at the bottom store table linens that need ironing before use.

Clean cuts. Save time, even money, with a few tweaks to your laundry routine:

Get thrifty. A tablespoon of fabric softener rubbed into a washcloth takes the place of expensive dryer sheets.

Sort quickly: Norman bought one white and one black laundry basket to make it crystal-clear to her kids where to toss their dirty lights and darks.

Lessen wrinkles: Reduce ironing time by removing items from the dryer when they’re damp. Many garments won’t need any ironing if you put them on hangers right away.