Daydreaming about candy coloured vintage laundry rooms

✯ Day 323 of Vintage 365 ✯

Like many people who live in an apartment (especially a rented one), I do not have laundry facilities in my unit. Though we're fortunate to have a small number (way, way to small for the size and population of our building) of washers and dryers in the basement, and thus not have to technically leave our building to clean our clothes, I can’t help but find myself daydreaming sometimes about how great it will be when one day we get to live somewhere with our own washer and dryer again.

This isn't the first place I've called home that didn't come part and parcel with a washer and dryer, but in accessing all the homes I've lived in (from childhood onwards), more have definitely had a laundry room of their own than did not.

On those days when we're schlepping baskets and bags (the large blue $0.99 Ikea bags they sell near the checkouts are very sturdy and make for an excellent way to carry laundry, if you need something a bit bigger than your average plastic basket) downstairs and back up for hours, I sometimes help pass the time by thinking about the sort of dream laundry room I'd build if I had the means (and space!).

Part of me is very, very drawn to a sort of rustic chic, British manor house style down up in pale shades of cream and white, perhaps with hits of robin's egg blue or pale celadon, complete with porcelain or enamel sinks. All very understatedly posh and timelessly wonderful, I assure you.

And then (not surprisingly! ) there's the other side of me who yearns for a 1950s inspired laundry room, styled in candy inspired pastels, like the beautiful one from the 1959 pictured below to call my own.

{Wonderfully colourful, spacious 1950s laundry room image, which first appeared in the April 1959 edition of American Home magazine, via saltycotton on Flickr.}

 

More than the delightful colours at work here, I think it's the sheer size of the this vintage laundry room - with space to not only house a washer, dryer, sewing counter, and storage cabinets, but also a quaint table and fun pink bucket chair - that appeals to me.

I'm also rather partial to the great pull-out storage drawers this lucky lady had in which to sort her lights, colours, darks, delicates and so on. Very, very handy and also nicely discrete thanks to the fact that they tuck neatly away behind the brown wooden cabinet door.

The idea of having one's sewing machine in the same space as their washer and dryer is also fantastic - and immensely practical. Think of how often you discovers a loose (or missing button), sock that needs darning, or fallen hem as you're loading or unloading garments from the wash. With a sewing machine mere steps away, I think it would be very easy (and convenient) to quickly attend to the garment in the moment, instead of letting a mending pile accumulate elsewhere in the house for days or weeks on end (I'm big on tackling little chores like that as they occur, as I find doing so creates the sense of less work in the long run).

For the time being though, I'll continue to trek to the basement to do laundry and carry out my mending in the living room (I don't have a sewing machine, so I hand mend), grateful that we at least have on-site washers and dryers, but at the same time optimistic about the prospect of the day when I get a laundry room of my own to decorate in whichever classic, vintage inspired style my heart desires.