My new house has an unnecessarily large laundry room. It’s definitely intended to be a laundry – you can tell by the way the cabinets are designed. There’s a space for a washing machine and a mounted attachment point for a dryer, and a deep metal sink next to a bench with a built-in ironing board. It’s clearly been designated for this purpose.
So why on earth is it so big? It’s almost as big as the living room. It makes me wonder what the previous owner was doing in here. I mean, surely the room was originally intended for something else, and they repurposed it as a laundry. Maybe they were a keen sewer – I’ve heard of people having their sewing machine set up in the laundry, which has always struck me as weird since laundries tend to be so small and pokey.
The exception to that is ones that have been totally redone. I guess people must hire laundry designers or something. I suppose it’s not that different to renovating your kitchen or bathroom, although who spends that much time in their laundry? That said, having a big, airy laundry as opposed to a cramped little afterthought of a room could make all the difference.
This brings me to what I should do with this space. I can imagine it being a nice sunroom, or perhaps a rumpus room for the grandkids, but those uses would preclude it from also being a laundry (in my view, anyway). If I leave it as-is, I’ll have to think of something laundering-adjacent to do with the space.
The question is, do I take up sewing, or move the laundry to another spot and use this space for something else? The latter would mean getting the best laundry renovations. Melbourne has to offer. That should be achievable right? Like I said, it seems to be a thing now. But do I want to be that person, who can’t just accept the laundry their house comes with?
I guess it comes down to how you want to use your space, which is going to be different for every person and may not make sense to anyone else.