Laundry love

Like most mums, I suspect, I spend a decent amount of time in the laundry. I do at least a couple of loads per day, and quite enjoy hanging it out. I love seeing a full line of washing flapping in the breeze. I adore the smell of sunshine dried clothes.

Bringing it in, folding it up, and putting it away - well, that's another matter entirely.

Our laundry is downstairs, inside, next to the bathroom. It's more of a laundry nook, I suppose. It doesn't have its own room, a door, or anything to hide its utilitarianism from view. It's also pretty messy, most of the time. It has one shelf, that's too high for me to reach, so stuff doesn't get stored there. Instead it just sits on top of the front-loader, where lots of other miscellaneous household items end up. This morning there was a box of screwdrivers, a torch (that doesn't work), an empty washing powder box, and a drinking glass... Safety first in this house!

In the first few years that we lived here, before the boys were born, it wasn't so bad. We kind of rattled around in this big space, and between the two of us, didn't generate too much laundry. It was easy to keep tidy and organised.

Fast forward four years and it's a completely different story.

It drives me mad. It really does. I'm a visual person. But more than that, I am a person who needs a soothing visual palette for my mental health to remain intact. I can't handle looking at mess. If my surroundings are messy, I get agitated, cranky, short-tempered and anxious. I am well aware of how ridiculous that sounds, but it's true nonetheless. Besides, I know I'm in good company.

So, I have a plan. Adjacent to our laundry space is our linen cupboard. I want to build a frame and walls around the existing laundry space and put doors on the front so that it looks the same as the linen cupboard. Well, not me, personally, of course. Although it would be handy to know how to build stuff. I quite like the idea of wielding a nail gun and a saw.

Inside, I'm thinking I (again, not me, per se) might configure it a bit like this to give everything a rightful place, and create a bit of extra storage:

or this (how gorgeous is that timber):

Or even this (but with shorter cupboards because I know having them that low hanging would drive me mad), if I decide a folding surface is more important than a sink. Is it? Hmm. I don't know. Is a laundry sink a must-have?

On another tangent entirely, when I was looking for laundry design online I lost count of the number I saw styled with cotton tips and cotton balls. In the laundry. Why??? 

I've been thinking about making my own laundry powder too, although every recipe I see calls for Borax. I'm not sure I'm down with that. I'll keep searching.

When I grow up, and build a house, I'm having a whole laundry room. With a door.