I have some work and planning ahead of me since I now have a new laundry room. I’ve never had a dedicated laundry room before so I’m slightly excited! That is an understatement. 

In my first apartment the laundry was in the basement for everyone to use. It did come in handy since it was in the actual building we were in. Plus my husband and I made out first “couple” friends, who we are still close to,  by bumping into them doing laundry. 

Our second apartment was in a three family home. No laundry on site. That meant gathering all the laundry on the weekend and spending Saturday doing a couple loads at the laundromat. It also meant occasionally bringing it to mom and dad’s house. 

Next we built a house. I put the laundry in a closet in the bathroom upstairs. Within a couple of weeks I realized this was a bad set up. First of all to open the bi fold doors you had to shut yourself inside the bathroom. There was no place to put the dirty laundry so there were always piles on the floor. I eventually took the doors off and replaced them with curtains. That solved the door issue but not the piles on the floor issue. 

Once we had our first child I realized that having the laundry upstairs was not a good thing in a totally different way. Being a new mother I was working around the schedule of a tiny baby. I did not even consider the idea that she could nap while a load of laundry was running. What if she woke up when the dryer beeped? What if the spin cycle of the washing machine disturbed her slumber? Move ahead a couple of years and baby number three took all his naps in the car with two other kids chatting and singing along to their Disney mix. 

So the laundry was done in the tiny windows of time between morning naps, afternoon naps, lunches, snacks, bath time and bedtime. Add on two more kids, boys this time who would create chaos if left alone for a second. This meant the piles on the floor never disappeared. They just grew into mountains. 

When we moved into our new house I was happy to have the laundry in the mudroom. I walk through this room everyday so the routine of throwing in a load of laundry is easy. We now have five people in the family so we have piles again. Volume, not timing, is the problem this time. This is a small room so there is not too many places to put those piles. Once we made plans to finish the basement I knew this would include a laundry room. Something with storage, a place to put dirty clothes, a little pretty added on the side, and not too much else. Just a laundry room.