Laundry Day

Time to lighten things up after such a heavy post yesterday!

On Sunday, as I was thinking through the coming week and making some plans, I asked my oh-so-helpful mother if she would like to help me have a laundry catch-up day on Monday. Being continually willing to offer assistance (and enjoying laundry very much), she immediately said yes. :)

We got A LOT of laundry done yesterday! Between her washing machine and mine, her clothesline and my dryer (since lugging a load of wet clothes out to my clothesline was the last thing I wanted to do), we must have done 8-10 loads. I had one more load to do today, and that was it: I am completely caught up, including clean sheets on all the beds, fresh towels, everything, all the way to the very bottom of our laundry chute--and now, everything is folded and put away. What a great feeling!

I was feeling thankful yesterday, not only for my mother's help (which was huge), but also for such a pleasant room in which to do laundry. As I reminisced, I thought of the various places in which I've done laundry and the machines I've had to use: my college dorm room where we shared a few machines at the end of the hall or in the basement, our first townhouse in California where we were grateful to have a little laundry room in our complex instead of lugging all our laundry to a laundromat (there were two washers and two dryers for the 14 units in the complex, so we got to deal with the frustration of waiting for others to finish before we could do ours), our second townhouse in California where we were able to have our own washer and dryer in our garage!, our tiny apartment in Israel where we managed to fit a tiny washer into the tiny laundry room (and later, through the generosity of some American friends, we added a dryer, just in time to help us keep up with the increased wash load of having baby David)...and now, here in this home, we have a whole, fairly large room just for laundry! Oh, the luxury!!

When we moved in, the walls were white and the trim was wood, of course. This was the first room we changed, adding some brightness to the walls with a cheerful yellow color and painting the trim white. Since this room doesn't get any natural sunlight, I knew without a doubt that I wanted something light and bright on the walls.

It's a fairly simple room; we haven't "gussied it up" much...but here and there are some decorative bits and pieces, things that are special to me.

This is the view as you walk in...

You might notice that our washer and dryer don't match. That's because our dryer that did match met an untimely end, and our budget told us to look for a replacement on Craig's List rather than the closest appliance store. We did and found one; and even though it's old, isn't the prettiest thing ever, and makes a horrible squeal at a certain point in its cycle, I'm very grateful to have a working dryer!

In another corner are these big sinks; and my oh my, do they come in handy for washing out big, dirty stuff: roasters, buckets, paintbrushes, etc.

Here is a closer look at the old washboards that are hanging beside the dryer. These came from my maternal grandparents' home, and the one on the right is extra special since it is the small washboard that my grandma would let my mother play with while Grandma did the regular laundry on the big washboard. These are an excellent reminder to me to be grateful for technological advancements, even when the dryer sounds atrocious. At least I don't have to scrub clothes on a washboard! :)

This is a close-up of the smaller washboard. My Aunt Joyce (my mother's sister) painted this pretty scene on it (to coordinate with our wallpaper border), and surprised me with it during their visit earlier this year. I love it!

And here is a closer view of the wallpaper border: sunny, cheerful, blue and yellow, exactly what I wanted.

This is an old cabinet that has faithfully functioned in this laundry room for longer than I can remember. It has a wonderful enamel top; and besides housing all the necessary laundry stuff (as well as car wax, bug spray, mouse traps, etc.), it provides a handy work surface that can get wet and that cleans off easily. At one point, I had thought about painting this blue (except for the enamel top); but obviously that hasn't happened yet!

You might be wondering why in the world there is a wooden spoon in my laundry room. Let me tell you, even though it looks like a wooden spoon, it isn't. It is......a laundry stick. What? You've never heard of a laundry stick? Well, neither had I until I moved back here and saw my mother using my grandma's old laundry stick; and then, after a long while, I wised up and realized I could benefit from a laundry stick, too. So, what can you do with a laundry stick? You can poke the laundry in your machine after it fills with water and starts agitating to assess how full the washer really is and whether you can put more clothes in it. And, if you've filled it too full (not that I ever do this!), you can poke the clothes down in the water and try to convince yourself that it really isn't overfilled because, after all, all the clothes are now wet! Seriously, this is a lifesaver for me...actually a hand-saver...because with the eczema on my hands, putting them into wash water just irritates them, so the more times I can get the laundry stick wet and not my hands, the better!

One of the other little things I like in this room is the way the outlet cover and switch plates are all decorative and matching. It's the little things that make me happy. :)

The latest addition to the laundry room is this simple white shelf that Jeff put up for me so that I could place a few things there: two antique jars, one with old buttons, one with old wooden spools, and best of all, a picture of our family, which always reminds me of who my labor of love in the laundry room is for.