Wednesday, April 22, 2015

My Dirty Laundry

Every Tuesday or thereabouts, I lug a basket or two of laundry up and down the basement stairs.
The stairs are dangerous ones, with angled edges, covered with shiny, slippery paint, and a handrail that ends a yard above the bottom step.
It's a dark, dank place to do laundry. In the cement next to the washing machine there is a hole in the cement, where Scott has placed a sump pump. Once he found a pair of my panties had fallen in.


I dream of a finished laundry room, with bright walls and a linoleum floor; a laundry room so delightful I will leave the ironing board set up and find something to press so I have a reason to spend time there. Even better would be if the washer and dryer were on the main floor and there were no more stairs to navigate with a bulky load in my arms.

I think the Brits are onto something, the way they keep their laundry machines in their kitchens.

6 comments:

  1. I love it, panties in the sump hole! A great surprise for Scott! :)

    I've been doing my wash at the laundromat for the last five months, so I envy your arrangement, but agree that a bright laundry room on the main floor of the house would be the cat's meow!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well they might have been a great surprise if they had fallen in AFTER they were washed, instead of before!

      We have a nice big porch where I'd love to put the washer and dryer, but my Scottie has reservations about doing so -- whence the porch would no longer be so nice and big, and there would be other drawbacks.

      I take quilts and whites to the laundromat because our water is so hard (iron and sulphur) that it stains things. What a pain in the ass that is. I don't mind sitting there, reading, but I hate lugging stuff in and out of vehicles. And that goes for groceries, too. Still, I'm glad we don't have to bang our laundry on river rocks, so had best not complain.

      Delete
  2. Our first house had a finished basement, we pretty much lived down there we loved it so much. Then one year we started hardly using it...I think it was age combined with a need for real light.

    My folks house had a laundry chute at the head of the stairs so it was all already down there when mom got to it. I'll bet you are just the woman to cut a hole and surround it with 4 boards :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh Sharyn, if I did that, I would never hear the end of it. I live with a carpenter! To be done right, HE would have to do it. If he's going to do a major reno, I think I'll request a dumb waiter to take the laundry between floors -- both directions.

      The plans are to completely finish the basement — of course there is no time limit for doing these things, so will we ever see them done? I'm not holding my breath; Scott is a busy boy and I don't have the skills (or half his energy, come to that) — but one day it would be nice to be able to sleep down there on the hot nights, or the nights when a tornado could sneak up.

      Delete
  3. You'd love what I've done then :) I converted a bedroom upstairs to a utility room which also acts as my closet so everything is on the same floor and I use the chest freezer for folding/ironing. Not that I iron much, but, hey.
    XO
    WWW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah! That sounds perfect. No lugging, everything right there, convenient. As for ironing, I rarely do it and am no good at it; things look almost as wrinkly when I'm done. I always think of Mom telling me, when I'd be ironing seams as we were quilting: "PRESS. That's why it's called PRESSING."

      Delete

Leave a message here or email me at stubblejumperscafe@gmail.com, home of the snow and land of the wheat!