Why is it that dingy basement laundry room designs are the norm?

Ever since families started doing their own laundry in their own home instead of taking it out to commercial laundries, laundry day chores have been relegated to out of the way places like the basement or the garage. I think that good laundry room designs would at least require that the laundry center in the home would be placed close to where the laundry is produced! The last time I did laundry none of it came from the garage!

Laundry coordinators in every home (you know who you are) have been lugging piles of laundry to the basement or the garage for decades and I think it is time to start planning for laundry room designs that are user friendly for the entire family. The average North American family does anywhere from 7-10 loads of laundry a week so it is a chore that takes up considerable time in family life. It is time to take a look at sensible laundry room designs.

Let’s face it if you have to do laundry, you will want it to be as pleasant a chore as possible. At the very least good planning should remove some of the unpleasantness that currently goes along with laundry day.

Good laundry room designs should provide for convenience for the entire laundry process and not just washing and drying. The entire laundry process includes sorting, washing, drying, folding, and ironing so here is my wish list for a laundry room makeover.

• stacked full size washer and dryer - any space over the washer or dryer is wasted space. Even if you put shelves or cupboards up there you would have to be a gorilla to reach into them.
• sound insulation - I might have to do laundry but I do not want to be reminded of it all the time by the noise of the machines.
• a laundry room designed just for laundry - ever notice how laundry rooms get messy with dirty clothes and laundry hampers strewn about?. My dream laundry center will be just for laundry so that I do not have to trip over other things (basketballs, runners, coats, snowsuits, galoshes etc) on laundry day.
• a laundry center close to where the "inputs" are! - Why can't the laundry room be close to the bedrooms? That's where most of the laundry comes from! Think how much time can be saved if the trip to the laundry room from the bedroom is a short one!
• special "cubbies" assigned to each family member - clean folded laundry could be placed there for them to put away in their own room.
• a horizontal work surface - just large enough to use for folding towels, sheets, or t-shirts
• cabinets and shelving - laundry supplies like soap, bleach, and stain remover are best hidden behind closed doors! Preferably in a vertical cabinet space beside the stackable machines
• drying area - or some small space or drying rack to hang up clothing that needs to be air dried
• a supply of buttons and thread - it would be most convenient to be able to sew on a button right away when you notice it is loose.
• a drop down ironing board – Who likes setting up the ironing board? And have you ever noticed that once it is set up it stays there? and everything gets piled on it so you cannot even use it for ironing. I would like to have my ironing board ready to go and the iron already plugged in so I could just turn it on with a flick of a switch!
• a laundry tub- a place for soaking or pre- treating stains or soaking some of those bigger items like sheer draperies.
• a few spare bins and/or baskets for orphaned socks - You never know the missing mate just might show up on the next laundry day!

If laundry day has to be a part of contemporary life, it can certainly be made a lot more enjoyable by good laundry room design!