Laundry Room Blues

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Illustration by Judy Martin

   OF all the things I miss about our old house
— the one we lived in for 28 years — I never expected the laundry room to be near the top of the
list.

   Call me crazy, but as wistful as I am about that house’s wonderful leaded glass windows and chestnut paneling, I also yearn for that unglamorous, decidedly Spartan space where the washer and dryer resided.

   Even though it was humble, I loved that room with the ancient yellow and orange plaid wallpaper that I’d chosen on a whim because it was so sassy.

   It was the room in which I’d put up the poster my old friend Marsha gave me on one milestone birthday. "If you love something let it go" was the message, and we both knew exactly what that meant as we sent our last daughters off to college. I looked at that poster every single time I did laundry, and it brought a certain comfort.

   The laundry room in that old house was a kind of repository for our household’s miscellany. The clothespins from my parents’ old house, which would never be used again in this dryer age, occupied a part of one shelf. I can’t explain why I needed to save them, but I did.

   Our daughters’ ancient science projects — construction paper universes and crude little papier maché masterpieces — rested on a laundry room shelf, always threatening to topple. And odd things like markers and chalk, keys of unknown origin, film, sewing supplies and an overflow dishtowels somehow ended up in that cluttered laundry room.

   But most of all, it was a space in which I felt oddly peaceful. Something about sorting the lights and darks by the laundry room window gave me a sense of order when the rest of the world seemed out of control. The familiar touch of the washing machine controls in my hands — the sound of the water rushing into that big old washer tub — the lovely smell of warm, clean towels and sheets as they came out of the dryer — all enveloped me in an odd domesticity that’s easier felt than explained. And the laundry room was the taproot to those simple, sensory pleasures.

   These days, I do laundry in a compact little area on the bedroom level of the modern condo we’re renting while we search for our permanent home. It’s a perfectly practical location, and there are clever doors that conceal the whole little set-up when they’re closed.

   Of course it’s sensible to have the washer and dryer upstairs near the bedrooms, where the clothes are. And why take up an entire room for laundry when everything needed to do it can fit into a closet?

   But when I gather up the clothes and linens — when I open that efficient little closet — I often get a wave of nostalgia. I want to be back in that yellow and orange plaid world where I knew every inch of space, and where I could stand and fold things that defined our domestic life with the radio tuned to talk or classical or country, depending on my mood.

   Maybe it’s just that change is so hard, and that laundry, basic as it is, is a reminder of the old versus the new.

   Maybe it’s because memories of my mother hanging the wash out to dry on an old-fashioned clothesline — and humming while she did it — still linger. So yes, I have lovely associations with laundry, associations my own daughters, who scamper through laundry as if it were on fire, would never understand.

   And they may not understand why, as we search for the next place to call home, I will be looking for one that has a laundry room, not just an efficient little closet. I know now that I won’t settle for less.