This might sound a bit of a rant – and it is up to a point. I did two loads of washing today – nothing big deal about that. They were two BIG LOADS, in my lovely machine in the “laundry area”. I won’t call it a laundry as it is a little corner of the garage. It is a bit crowded there as I have a refrigerator and freezer also tucked up towards the corner – my son has been going to collect both of them for the past two years. He is at last about to move out of his shared house -IF he can get a rental property. I live in hope!
It is not the overcrowding of the corner that bothered me today. I had two heavy loads that I cast into the laundry basket and carried out to the clothes line. I remembered that once upon a time I had a laundry – it’s very own room on the ground floor of the house, right near the back door which enabled me to cast the washing from the machine into the basket on the laundry trolley and instead of having to carry it to the clothes line, I could wheel it! Oh, how I would love to be able to do that now!!! But, instead, I have to carry said basket of wet/sometimes heavy laundered items from the garage, along the passageway past the kitchen, dining room and out the door, across the verandah and along the pathway to the clothesline. There I “lump” it into the laundry trolley. Why not have the laundry trolley by the back door, you might ask? The pathway is a combination of stones and cement pavers – almost impossible to wheel a trolley with our without a load of washing. It is even challenging to walk along as the pavers are at such a distance apart that I need to stretch my legs out to reach the next pavers. Hardly safe carrying a load of washing.
Then when I make it to the clothes line I have another challenge. It is an immovable beast attached to the side fence, such that one has to take care about the items that one pegs to those lines nearest the fence. If it is long and flappy it gets caught in the timber fence – splinters of wood bend out from some of the timber fence palings. I don’t need them either clinging to my clothes or worse tearing at my clothes in the wind/breeze. If that is not bad enough, I am too tall for the lines and they are fixed. I can’t adjust the height so I must duck and weave around the lines.
So what do I want???
- A laundry which is close by, with easy access to the clothes line.
- A simple smooth pathway from the laundry to the clothesline.
- A Hills Hoist clothesline in the middle of my lawn, so that the washing catches the sun for most of the day and that I can adjust the height of the lines.
- The ability to use my “grey water” on the lawns – there’s no way I could run a hose from my washing machine all the way through the house to the back or front door and then to the lawn.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to work out that the above type of laundry and clothes line has nothing to do with the convenience of the house holder. It is all about cost. Builders/developers/designers are all about doing things cheaper without any consideration to the house holder. There is NOTHING practical for the householder. The laundry is in a deep dark recess of the garage and the only way to get light in is to turn the lights on, or open the garage door. Each option with its challenges – e.g. adding cost for lighting, or compromising security with the open garage door.
When the washing is dry I need several trips – carefully walking across the stones and pavers back into the house. It would also be nice to have a laundry where I could use the ironing board too.
The idea of the laundry in the garage is not a good one!
