Dirty laundry, does anyone really like to do it?

I was “inspired” by a friend to write this with her comment on face book that she was “Getting ready to do some exciting work in my laundry room I am inspired”. I mentioned to her that I had never seen the three words – exciting, laundry and inspired together in the same sentence. Now at my house both Bride and I hate to do laundry, when I win the lotto I will never do it again. After the win one of two things will happen, I will never wear the same thing twice and donate each piece after wearing or I will hire someone whose sole job it is to do our laundry, including retumbling socks right before I put them on (come on you love that too). Aside from the million of options you have with the actual washer and dryer there are another million choices of what soap to use. On top of all of that you then have the fabric softener, liquid in the washer or sheets in the dryer. You have the stress of picking and purchasing all those things before you can even consider actually doing any laundry, egads!

When we bought our first house it was a little home built in the late 50’s and you had to go outside into the carport and through another door to get into the laundry room. The room was small and unfinished, 2x4 wall studs were showing, the hot water heater was there as well and the lighting was poor and the facility lacked any folding table. My Bride HATED to do laundry in that room, there was also the occasional flying terradactyl in there as well, most folks call those palmetto bugs but any bug that can look you in the eye and intimidate you as he flies by is a remaining dinosaur, I do not care what any paleontologist says. After about a year of living in that house there and many loads of laundry for me and one day she let it slip that if we only had an indoor laundry room that I would never have to do laundry again. Well that very day I made the necessary trips to The Home Depot to buy supplies. That weekend I cut through the wall, installing a door and enclosing half of the room that was previously accessible only after a trip through the car port. I took Monday and Tuesday off to complete installing the tile flooring, lots of florescent lighting and a big folding table, and my days of doing the laundry were over! I bet in the 8 years more we lived in that house I did laundry maybe 10 times, bride kept her end of the bargain.

When we moved to our next house our washer and dryer were in the garage and while it was not quite as bad as the other house it was still “in the garage” and lacked any folding table or hanging rods. I did not realize the importance of both of these items until installing and using them in the other house. We had fallen into a routine where I did not do laundry and she did not have to put gas in her car so when we moved into the second house we kind of continued the same routine. I heard the slight grumblings about missing the folding table and hanging rod as well as seeing a bug beside the washer, I slowly stepping back into the sharing laundry duty with her. I was waiting for the comment, “if we only had an indoor laundry room you will never have to do laundry again”, I found out she had learned a lesson on that already and would not be repeating that mistake again. We were in this house a few years and I was back to a routine with laundry and realizing I would not get out of it again until I took it upon myself to come up with a plan to get the convenience of a nice laundry room again.

After quite a bit of planning and even more work I was able to tear out and reconfigure that end of the house to allow me to build that laundry room inside. At the same time I was able to build a much bigger pantry inside, the old pantry was like a small closet that measured about 2 foot by 2 foot and had 4 shelves. Well after a couple of months of work, replumbing that whole end of the house, moving the washing machine drain, moving the hot water heater and installing a water softener I was done. The new pantry was 5x8 and the laundry room was even bigger at about 6x12 with a gigantic folding table and a 8 foot long hanging rod and it was right off the kitchen and it was air conditioned to boot.

The convenience of the big folding table and hanging rod had an unanticipated side effect, we no longer even put our clothes away, we folded and hangered them right there and left them in there. I am not sure yet if that makes us bad people, we do not have kids so what difference does it make whether we store our clothes in a dresser or the well equipped laundry? At least that I what I was thinking and since she was doing the same thing who was I to say anything. So we still hate to do laundry, but the part we hated the most, putting it away has been eliminated for us. We used to consider “doing laundry” as the whole process, wash, dry, fold and put away. We still hate to fold, which is what we now consider “doing laundry”, if you don’t fold it you do not get credit for doing laundry. I tell ya though when I win big in the lotto I will not being doing any part of the laundry process, other than putting it on and taking it off.

So Lynn, did you get that laundry done?