Inside Out | A Closet Full of Clean

DESIGN
By RITA KONIG
August 24, 2010, 2:53 pm

Evan Sklar/Getty Images
One needs so little space to make a really useful laundry closet.

I have started looking for a new apartment. Within 48 hours, I became that clichéd New Yorker, addicted to real estate Web sites and printing floor plans out to rearrange them into my perfect apartment; I even bought a printer on Sunday so that I could print them at home! There are few things that I like more than redesigning spaces on the back on an envelope, creating rooms with little squares that represent sofas and end tables, and imagining scenes of afternoons and evenings with people popping over, and dinners being cooked in a kitchen that was once a closet and second bathroom, and which is now a place where herbs are chopped and corks are pulled from bottles.

One thing that astonishes me is the lack of laundry rooms in these apartments. You can be looking at spending $2 million, and you’re expected to go down to the basement to do your laundry in a machine being shared by the entire building. In a city where most of the inhabitants are extremely spoiled and picky in almost all other aspects of their lives, we accept some amazing discomforts in our (generally expensive) living arrangements. I won’t dwell too much on the apartments I have seen with walls shooting off in funny directions, master bedrooms that are referred to as sleeping nooks and windows that are too high or in strange corners. The rest of the country must think we are mad. I do!

While I was in London recently, I realized how much I miss having a washing machine and dryer in my apartment, and it is now an absolute must when I buy a place. One needs so little space to make a really useful laundry closet — literally the depth of a machine and the width of two, and of course some plumbing. I am currently trying to turn my closet office (now obsolete since I’ve moved to a proper office) into a laundry, since the room behind it is a kitchen — with the aforementioned plumbing. I am hoping this will be quite simple, and even if I am only here another year, it will be worth it.

Now, down to brass tacks. The best way to do this is to have two front-loading machines next to each other. The stacking system is a nightmare as you lose counter space, which you need for sorting all that laundry! Have the counter made with a piece of plastic laminate, and add shelving above for the stacks of fluffy white towels and pressed linens that seem to be the foundations of our fantasies, and of Martha Stewart’s fortune. Even the smallest spaces can fit this thoroughly civilized addition, which gives you a chance at domestic order, and when everything else is hectic, I find some solace in folding towels and arranging them neatly, rather than slinging them on the side of one’s clothes closet.

Then there is the accessorizing, the baskets, the large jars — those wonderful vintage glass ones that come from Europe, filled with soap powder and a scoop. There is space to keep an abundance of all those things that promise to take stains out. I love having boxes that make light bulbs, batteries and the various wires, extensions, USB ports and foreign adapters that seem to gather in my home much easier to find. I also love Hable Construction minitotes for chucking all these things in, and Lanvin shoe boxes are rather good, too. A laundry closet becomes the efficiency hub of even the smallest New York apartment.



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