Some people measure the passage of time with seasons changing, New Year’s celebrations, or birthdays. Today I ironed. So it must mean that another five or six months has passed. It might sound like an exaggeration, but that’s about how often I iron.
Most people wouldn’t classify ironing as a hobby, I know I wouldn’t, but somehow I do get some small pleasure from it. Maybe it’s the Type A part of me, or the part that likes organization, or the part that likes to see a box checked off on the to-do list.
Tomorrow is the Maryland Chamber of Commerce Business Breakthrough Awards ceremony (bluehouse architecture is a finalist for the 1-10 employee category), and after deciding what to wear, I realized it needed a quick pass with the iron. And as I ironed a rumpled shirt into a neat and crisp blouse, I realized I kind of like to iron. So why do I do it so infrequently?
Well, first, I’m blessed to have a husband who wears polo shirts to work and since I work from home most days, I manage a business casual-style approach to most of my appointments. But the main reason I don’t iron much is design.
We bought the house we live in already constructed, built by another family some fifteen or twenty years ago. When they built the house, they selected various design elements that reflected their lifestyle. I’m thrilled they added a two-foot bump-out to the side of the house, which added space to the living room, dining room, and to two bedrooms. But I’m not so thrilled that they seemed to fear the possibility of leaking water. Instead of placing the laundry in the nice big space at the center of the second floor, they relegated it to the basement, tucked behind two small closet doors. For doing the laundry it is a perfectly functional space. But it is not one of those fancy spaces depicted on pinterest that beckons you to come relax with a glass of wine and mood music. In my house, ironing is done awkwardly in part of the kids’ play area and it is a rushed item stuck in the middle of a giant to-do list.
So why am I telling you about my laundry habits and that it is somehow related to design?
Because it is.
If we had built this house, I’d have put the laundry in the nice big room that occupies the middle of the second floor. I can picture the space now: I’d have a folding table on top of the washer and dryer and a fold-down ironing board that tucks out of the way but is ready when the need arises. Heck, maybe I’d have added that mood music.
Many people seem to have something in their house that they’d change. And most people aren’t going to build a new house to accommodate that change. But as we redo portions of our house, I have managed to “fix” some of the problems that don’t meet our needs. It might have seemed like just a simple kitchen remodel (we didn’t increase the size of the room or do anything too drastic), but while replacing the cabinets and counters, we included some minor design changes that have had a huge impact. We turned the island, making it just a bit bigger to accommodate one more person, we extended cabinets to the ceiling to get a little more seasonal/party storage, we added a spot to charge phones and the hand-held vacuum, and we picked a bigger range to accommodate holiday entertaining.
While I’m not lucky enough to have gotten the laundry upstairs, I have been able to bring an architect’s skill set to many of our projects, figuring out the needs of the family (large and small) and figuring out what could be accommodated in the project we were undertaking. An architect’s job is to listen to the project scope, the wish list for that project, and the general use of the whole house to make sure the best possible (and useful and aesthetically pleasing) design is created, and suggesting ideas or alternatives that a homeowner may not have thought about.
…….
As for the laundry room design that dances in my head… that particular problem needed to be dealt with during the rough plumbing stage of the initial construction, since we can’t get the fall we need for drainage now without ripping out the ceiling in most of the first floor and through the stairways. So I will need to hold that Pinterest-worthy laundry room project, and my architect skills, in reserve until we build our next house.
