There were lots of things I wanted to add to the house when we did the remodel. Some of them I got (the mixer lift, which has been a lot of trouble — I expected my yuppie forebears to have figured this out already!) and some of them I didn’t (the kitchen sink pedal, which I really wanted so I didn’t have to touch the faucet handles while fixing dinner, but it wasn’t planned for correctly, so…).
One thing I really needed to figure out was what to do about my laundry room.
Pre-remodel, all I’d had was a hallway for the washer and dryer, which meant I usually ended up doing the laundry in the dining room. Which we therefore rarely used because there was always a huge pile of laundry on the table. I also had a gigantic clothes rack installed in the corner of the dining room for all of the air-dry stuff: my workout clothes, my unmentionables, my sweaters… Basically, our dining room was the laundry.
After the remodel, enough space was added to make the laundry room an actual room, with cabinets and things.
My new laundry room, complete with laundry
And the best part is the one that most people don’t even notice.
Go ahead, look for it….
No, not the Amazon box. That needs to go out the side door to the recycling bin. Ignore the box.
No, not the huge quantity of cabinets that I haven’t even filled up yet. I know, right? How is that possible? I have no idea. I’m not trying especially hard to fill them; I figure that will just come with time.
Oh, all right, here it is:
The clothes rack
I did lots of research, trying to find a)an indoor clothes drying rack that b)could handle lots of laundry and c)would get the hell out of the way when not being used. Lots of people have walked through my laundry room only to have me point out the rack and then they say, “Whoa! I noticed your piles of laundry and your empty Amazon boxes, but I did not notice that.”
I eventually ended up on a Swiss site, because I couldn’t find anything domestically made that fit my requirements. I almost went for a British kitchen rack, but I decided the sleeker Swiss German model fit our needs better. I can’t find the exact model we got online, but I’m pretty sure it was a Stewi.
This thing is awesome, particularly as 92% of my clothing now requires air-drying.
It works like this: you lower the rack from the ceiling using a very high-tech “twine” system.
The rack, lowered
Then you open the wings.
Prepared for flight
Then you load it up, however you like, either with things hanging on one of the rungs, or laying flat out over several, and retract the whole thing up to the ceiling.
I will have clean clothes again soon
I am very fond of my Miele washer and dryer, and the long counter over there on the left-hand side, currently loaded with many baskets’ worth of laundry is quite nice too. But this drying rack is DA BOMB.
It did impress during the open house. I imagine it’s the kind of device that astronauts use.