This episode is a little different than my typical episode … it’s more of a personal explanation of my top floor plan regret that I have for my own custom home.
Although this is a personal story about my own home build experience, I know it will help many of you out there who are toying with the idea of doing what I did (and now regret).
Note: This post was updated in September 2026.
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MY TOP FLOOR PLAN REGRET
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Podcast Episode Transcript:
This episode is a little different than my typical episode … it’s more of a personal explanation of my top floor plan regret that I have for my own custom home.
Although this is a personal story about my own home build experience, I know it will help many of you out there who are toying with the idea of doing what I did (and now regret).
Welcome to The Before You Build Podcast. I’m your host, Carrie Barker (aka, Caroline on Design), and today, in episode 73, I’m sharing the number one thing I wish I had done differently when designing my custom floor plan.
Before we go any further, I have to tell you that overall, I LOVE my custom floor plan, and I have VERY few regrets … really almost none … and we’ve been in our house for thirteen years (as of next month).
However, there is ONE thing (about my house layout) that does drive me a little insane at times, and I’m sharing it so that I can help YOU avoid making the same floor plan ‘mistake’ that I made.
Well, it’s not really a mistake, but it is annoying at times.
(update and spoiler alert … I’m moving soon so this will no longer be an issue!)
MY BIGGEST CUSTOM FLOOR PLAN REGRET
My number one floor plan regret for my custom home is combining my mudroom and laundry room into one space.
Now … this wasn’t always an issue for us, but it became more of an issue over the years.
So, let me take you back a few years … back when I used to post photos of my home all over Instagram. Every once in a while, I’d get some pretty snarky remarks. Normally, I just overlooked them, but one comment stood out to me.
Someone commented (in response to a photo of my combined mudroom/laundry room) that she couldn’t understand why anyone would combine these two rooms. Her argument was, ‘one room is meant for dirty shoes and the other room is meant for clean and tidy clothes’.
This is very true. She certainly had a point.
Yet at the time, I didn’t necessarily agree with her that these rooms should be separated.
Sometimes it’s a space or square footage issue, and you have no choice but to combine these rooms.
That’s actually WHY I did this very thing (i.e. it’s why I combined my mudroom and laundry room) when creating my own custom floor plan.
So at the time, it really didn’t bother me to have the rooms combined.
However, over the years, combining my mudroom and laundry room has become my top floor plan regret.
This combined space isn’t terrible. It’s actually a very nice room.
I just realized over time that it isn’t a functional layout for MY family.
THIS BECAME A PROBLEM OVER TIME
Honestly, my combined mudroom/laundry room wasn’t a problem for the first six or seven years living in our home. For some reason, it didn’t bother me to have clean and dirty in the same room. (which is really crazy if you know me in real life … I like things tidy)
As my girls got older (and taller and everything got bigger), I just got fed up, and I wish I had dedicated rooms for my laundry and mud area.
When we built our house, our girls were little (they were 3 and 5 … and so stinkin’ cute!), and all of their stuff was little.
We had little pre-school backpacks, little kid shoes (that fit perfectly in our shoe drawers), little tiny coats, and a little stuffed animal or two thrown into their cubbies.
Then my daughters became teenagers, and they had LOTS of large shoes (my oldest wears a size 12), large school backpacks stuffed full of MacBooks and binders, and large travel volleyball backpacks … and their stuff no longer fit perfectly into their cubbies.
We had shoes all over the floor of our mudroom (from all four of us), and it became a game of dodging landmines when you walked through that room.
Also, we got SO much busier as the girls got older; both did travel volleyball, and school was a full-time deal (unlike pre-school, when we built).
The last thing on my mind after driving to volleyball practice or spending a weekend at a tournament was to clean our mudroom/laundry room. That was NOT happening! So it just stayed messy.
(side note – the room is still a mess, and our oldest doesn’t even live at home anymore because she’s in college)
WE STILL HAVE LAUNDRY TO DO
On top of the fact that we had shoes all over the floor and stuff everywhere, we also needed to do laundry in this room.
With four people (and a dirty little dog), we constantly had a stream of laundry going.
There were piles to be folded and drying racks full of clothes at all times.
This was literally the hardest-working area in our home, and it became too cramped to function well.
Psst … I took these photos on a non-laundry day, so this room is actually cleaner than normal. Hard to believe!
THE ‘REAL’ ISSUE
Here’s the reality … it’s never been the fact that we have dirty and clean in the same room that was an issue for me.
It’s the fact that we don’t have enough space for all of our stuff to fit nicely in this combined mud/laundry room.
My plan was to separate my mudroom and laundry room when we build our next home (and I would have), but life threw us a crazy little twist recently.
We ended up buying an existing house in our ideal established neighborhood (no empty lots to build on), and good news … our new house does have a dedicated laundry room and large mud cubby in the hall by the garage!
(I never thought I would buy an existing house again, but it is in the perfect location, and the bones are amazing! We have lots of fun cosmetic remodel projects in our future, and I’ll take you along for all of them! You can read about this life twist here.)
As much as I’m excited for our separate mud area and laundry room in our next home, it also makes me sad because I know our future home won’t have our current chaos.
We will be entering empty nesthood (is that a word?!), and I might actually miss the shoes littering the floor and the backpacks spilling out into the laundry side of the room. *Gasp* Did I really say that?!
When we built our current house, I had no idea my little 5-year-old daughter would end up being over 6′ tall and wearing size 11/12 shoes. If I had known that, I would have made our shoe drawers much larger :).
The moral of this long ‘story’ … plan your home for the space you need now and also for your family in the future.
If you want to dive deep into thinking about the perfect floor plan for YOUR family, download my FREE Floor Plan Creation Questionnaire.
WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE SPACE TO SEPARATE THE ROOMS?
I want to tell you another piece of advice I gave to one of my BEFORE YOU BUILD℠ members the other day, who is currently designing her floor plan.
She and her husband are empty nesters, and they don’t have space in their house to have separate laundry and mud rooms.
She was a little concerned because she knew I regretted combining these rooms.
I reminded her that it’s her home, and she can do whatever she wants. (That’s my mantra … this is YOUR home, and YOU get to decide what the perfect home is for YOU.)
I also reminded her that she won’t have the chaos of kids living in the house every day. It’s just her and her husband, and they can keep the space neat and tidy (unlike a busy family in the thick of childhood).
FREE FLOOR PLAN QUESTIONNAIRE
Here’s what I want to leave you with … remember that you are designing YOUR home for YOUR family.
Just because my top floor plan regret is combining my mudroom and laundry room doesn’t mean it will be an issue for you.
Design YOUR home for YOUR family!
Take my advice (and others’ advice), but remember that the ultimate decision of what’s best for YOUR family is up to YOU.
If you want simple prompts to help you consider your family’s needs (both current and future) so you end up with a home layout perfectly designed for YOUR family, download my *FREE* Floor Plan Creation Questionnaire and dive deep into thinking about the perfect floor plan for YOUR family.
P.S. I’ll let you know what I think about having a separate laundry room and mud area once we’re settled into our new home! 😉
