I Love Laundry Day

Well, I do. Well, NOW I do.

I used to do laundry in a 5X8 foot cubicle. Just enough room for the washer, dryer, freezer, and a rolling clothes rack. Now I do laundry in a room in the basement - a room that expands over 1/3 of the bottom of the house! I have a washer, dryer, a big ol' laundry tub, a corner laundry table with cabinets and drawers, and a clothes pole that hangs from the ceiling. If I have to iron, the ironing board is hanging under the basement stairs - and even folded out, there is still room to walk around it and everything else. Over under the head of the basement stairs is a laundry chute, where dirty discarded clothes slide down into a nice tall box. The big kiln - the one I could bake a body in, the one that according to a coroner gets hotter than a crematorium - has to sit in there next to the dryer, since both are 220. It is between the dryer and the laundry table, with plenty of room on all sides to walk around.

When you come down the basement stairs, if you turn right, you go into the laundry room. Beyond that is a doorway that leads into what used to be a bedroom, nicely carpeted - but which is now an excercise room where the Bowflex lives, with a cabinet that holds my extra storage of can lids, BIG empty glass pickle jars, large empty plastic sealed containers, and boxes and boxes of bar soap, that we got when we installed our water softener in the old house and never used.

If you turn left, you go into the small room. It used to be the "cooling room" for the dairy. I'm using its shelves to store my seasonal stuff - vases, fall decorations, Christmas decorations; everything boxed and neatly labeled. There is an old refrigerator down there that still works. The door to the backyard is off that room too - nice to have it open to let the breezes in. The steps are a little steep and uneven, but it is a convenient egress if I want to hang clothes on the line or check out the weather while I'm down there.

And I'm down there a LOT during Laundry Day. Because the room behind the cooling room is my ceramics shop. One whole wall of shelves has my molds, the other wall of shelves has my finished ( and not-quite-finished) works. There are three tables set up in the middle. Down there, I'm pouring, painting, carving, sanding, attaching, patching, and getting ready to fire or refire ceramics. Why go up and down stairs to check on the laundry, when I can sit right there and hear the dryer shut off while I'm creating?

In between the ceramics room and the exercise room is a connecting walkway with shelves on one whole wall, and two clothes poles on the other wall. The plastic trash cans with my 50 lb bags of sugar and flour fit nicely on the clothes-pole side, while the "extra" food items like spices, mustard, mayo, lemon juice, and canned dehydrated foods line the shelves. Buying a little extra each week is filling those shelves rather nicely, too.

I know that people wonder why I bought a BIGGER house instead of a smaller one, since Mike and I are on our own. Easy. One, we can afford a bigger house with the children gone - and two, we were horribly cramped in that smaller house, between his shop and mine, our own hobbies and interests, our storage of things that we needed often, occasionally, or "might need". Now I have walking room - and going up and down stairs is good for me. It's good for Mike, too, even though it is a lot harder for him than it is for me.

Looking around the basement bedroom, nee exercise room, we have discussed the possibility of either a two-man hot tub ($899 delivered) or a small self enclosed sauna ($2500 delivered). There would be enough room for either, and either one would be good for us in our physical conditions. And -it would make the winters rather cozy and private, too. Maybe later. We are still working on things around the house. But having this much room is simply wonderful - and comforting. Yes, these days, I do love Laundry Day!