Manky airing cupboard makeover help please. pics

[FlyMeToDunoon]

I never know how people manage to make their airing cupboards nice. Mine have always been nasty, dusty, cobbled together in 1938 affairs. Evidence of which I have attached in the pics.
It has patches in the water stained ceiling.
It's painted institutional vomit green.
There's dust. Surely the dust will always come because nasty ceiling?
I dread to think what might be lurking on the floor behind the water tank. Luckily I have no intentions of finding out.
A pipe in the middle of one shelf. Yay.
The ceiling is higher inside than the height of the door which means jiggling boxes around to stack them and then a further jiggle to access the contents.
The tiled wall of the shower is on the other side of the left hand side of the cupboard. I mention this because I don't fancy drilling holes in it for more potential shelving.

At the moment I stack cardboard boxes on the top shelf. These contain unused curtains, dressing up clothes, the Christmas linens and some bedding etc. On the bottom shelf I pile up clean towels and more bedding

So firstly any advice on how on earth to improve that ceiling. I can't imagine it taking kindly to nails or screws.
Ideas for management of high ceiling lower doorway issue. Will I always have to jiggle?
Ditto the pipe in the middle of the shelf.
Plus any other tips please. Has anyone made over a skanky airing cupboard?

Does an airing cupboard need to look nice? I would paint ceiling with stain blocking paint. Paint over green in white or whatever paint you have that can be wasted on this. I'd go to IKEA or similar and buy proper stacking boxes and label them up nicely. For the very top I would buy some canvas storage bags that can be squished in on top of the boxes. If room I would store one of those folding steps next to your cylinder.

No airing cupboards don't need to look nice but I don't like putting bedding and clean towels in there when it's a bit grot.
Appreciate the opinions on organisation.

Just needs painting - white wood and whatever light colour on the walls and pipes you like. Matt on the walls and eggshell on the pipes and wood.

poll across the top for hanging shirts?

then maybe some labels on the wood - towels, double duvet sets, single duvet sets so you know what pile is what. Or if it’s quite deep then wire baskets or dividers so you can pull things out (you could roll the towels and pack duvet sets into pillow cases so it’s easy to find things.

I think the PP doesn’t know the difference between an airing cupboard and a cupboard

No point using eggshell or white paint. It's light that activates the brighteners in the paint, so it will go yellow very quickly.
Chose something like a pale green or blue that won't discolour so much.

Put some damp sealant in the water stains.
Paint out the entire unit.
Replace shelving boards- mdf cut to size and painted a contrasting colour, maybe grey or greige.
Hit ikea for some storage for your bedding and towels to be kept in.

Just to add you can't do much about the pipes but clean and paint with appropriate paint.

The space looks like it could take an extra shelf also.

Maybe a motion activated light when the door is opened (also ikea)

Thanks!

Probably not an immediate (or probably a practical) option, but when our boiler died we had it re-sited downstairs. So we still have a manky airing cupboard but with more space.

No help but can I just say thank you for bringing the wonderful but underused word "manky" to the title .

We have big old surface run heating pipes in our house - we have made a feature of them, they are all painted in bright colours.
Our airing cupboard has clean white walls and bright red pipes, it's a pleasure putting the clean washing in there 😁.
I think you need to tidy up the slat shelves and put in an extra shelf. Are they varnished? Because they should not be in an airing cupboard. Then paint the walls and let every member of the family choose a pipe and a tester size pot of paint in their favourite colour...

The housing association has replaced next door's boiler with a combi and freed up their cupboard. Not mine though.

Is painting hot water pipes to boiler ok? Will it not peel off? Also fiddly and how many coats does that take?

You're welcome to manky!

No problem painting the pipes as long as you use appropriate paint for metal.
Make sure they're clean and dust free before hand .

Looks better than mine. I was sanding a bit of the ceiling this afternoon. It still looks bad so I may cover it with a bit of paint but behind the door at the top there is bare breeze block, never been plastered so I'll just leave that. My visitors don't have long swivelling necks and shouldn't be nosing in my airing cupboard anyway lol