laundry

In 2004-05 (during the rainiest winter on record in the Los Angeles-area), we remodeled our house.  Albert and I bought our house when we first moved to Southern California in the fall of 1999, so by that time had lived here for four years and knew exactly what we wanted to change.  One of the key things was our laundry area.  It was on an added-on, utility porch, with a big laundry sink that was never used and no place to keep dirty laundry, to fold laundry or to sort laundry for washing.  (My before pictures are not digital so I don’t have one to post here.  Note to self, add picture digitization to my to-do list…)

Now of course, I doubt anyone remodels a whole house just to upgrade the laundry area, but laundry is an extremely important part of life and I believe that the place where one does laundry should be as efficient as possible.  We decided to put the laundry closet on our newly added second floor, near the master bedroom and office.  I knew that I wanted a full-size, front-loading washer and dryer and would most likely stack them to make the most of the space.  I also knew that I wanted a place to sort dirty laundry and to fold clean laundry.  And I knew I wanted to utilize part of the laundry closet as a utility closet to house other household essentials like paper goods, light bulbs, sewing supplies, batteries, a tool box, etc.

After working with our architect (and neighbor) on a good space plan, I was able to start planning the appliances and fixtures that would go into the space.  Ever since I researched my first car with my dad, I have been a big user of Consumer Reports, so I turned there for advice and ratings on the appliances themselves.  Then I needed to solve for the rest of the laundry needs as well as all of the other uses for this space.  For this, I turned to a old favorite:  Elfa shelving from the Container Store.  I planned a shelving unit as well as a system of drawers with a tabletop that would fit next to the stacked washer/dryer.  The shelving would house all of the laundry paraphernalia as well as the toolbox, batteries, light bulbs, etc. that needed to be stored yet easily accessed when needed.  The drawers would house the paper goods, as well as be the place where the laundry was sorted.  The tabletop would be the folding space.

As I was working on the fleshed out space plan, I realized that the back of the laundry closet shared a wall with the master walk-in closet.  And I quickly realized what anyone in a long-term relationship will tell you, that making it as easy as possible for your significant other to put dirty laundry into the hamper promotes harmony in the relationship.  SO…I put the Elfa shelving and drawers on the space plan and then, when the framing was done, but before the drywall went up, I asked our contractor if he would create “pass-throughs” between the master closet and the laundry closet for the dirty clothes to go DIRECTLY into the sorted bin, one for whites and one for colors.  It has been a while and my memory is hazy, but I believe he stared at me as if I were a lunatic.  Luckily, he humored me and went with me upstairs to see if I had measured correctly.  Once we had determined that I had indeed measured correctly, he humored me again and told me he would frame out the laundry pass-throughs.  (I believe he probably thought it would be a little additional framing on his part, but since it would never really work, the drywall crew could just drywall over the framing as if it were never there.

WELL, much to the contractor’s surprise, my measurements really were right and the framing worked with the drywall.  The pass-throughs were a success!  (I added this to a string of “i-told-you-so”s from the whole remodeling process, but that is probably fodder for a future therapy session and maybe future blog posts, so I won’t digress now.)  My laundry closet is one of my favorite spaces in the whole house.  I thoroughly enjoy doing laundry every weekend (usually all-day on Saturday).  It is a cathartic experience for me and I LOVE having everything clean all at once.  It is also a great space for accessing all of the utility items that I had hoped to store here.

Here are some photos of the current space.  Hope you like it!

laundry closet: doors closed

laundry closet: doors open

laundry pass-throughs from master closet

---