Accept The Fact British Are Correct - Washing Machines Belong In Kitchen

[lowefficiency]

As a USA midwesterner, it's just a common and convenient thing here for houses to have laundry chutes too. Doesn't matter if it's a single-story with a basement, or a multi-story home, many of the last 100+ years of houses have them.

I don't know if this prevalence is a cause or an effect of our preference for dedicated rooms for laundry, but having the receiving end of a blind laundry chute be in a *kitchen* space seems like it could be problematic. And having it empty into a garage would be difficult for sure, if not flat-out forbidden by building codes.

 

[iej]

France

France is a real treasure trove of mid 20th century odd washing machine designs. Google around for them and you’ll find a lot of very unusual, often glass door topped, fairly large horizontal drum top loaders with pretty unusual controls and styling.

I would also say that France probably has the largest selection of obscure laundry detergents I’ve seen anywhere, including the US.

It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen a washer made specifically for doing expensive lingerie, complete with styling.

A French bijoux washing machine by designer, Chantal Thomass and Vedette for the boudoir:
https://fr.fashionnetwork.com/news/chantal-thomass-met-le-lave-linge-en-vedette,17660.html

Take a look through this YouTube channel for the old washing machines of France :

Link to a 1965 automatic top loader by Vedette (with a controller that has clearly seen better days and is making a lot of noise)



I wouldn’t say it’s remotely fair to stereotype France as not washing. If anything it just washes with a certain je ne sais quoi and a ton of complex herbal scented laundry products that look more like they would belong in L’Occitane than a laundry aisle.

[this post was last edited: 2/19/2020-14:29]

 

[ea56]

I can’t understand why anyone would object to having their washing machine in the kitchen, as long as you have one thats what really matters. When my family moved to the country when I was 13 the washing machine was in the kitchen. The home was built by a man from Germany, and I guess perhaps he chose the kitchen for the washer because thats what he was familiar with. The washer that came with the home was a 1961 TOL Lady Kenmore, with a suds saver and a porcelain laundry tub in a cabinet was next to the washer. Since Mom had already bought a new MOL Whirlpool in 1962, and the driveway needed grading, she traded the Lady K with a friend that had the heavy equipment to grade the driveway as a barter for the driveway work. We used the 62’ Whirlpool until 69’ when she bought a new Maytag Model E wringer, which was also in the kitchen. The dryer sat on the unenclosed back porch, exposed to the weather, also a 62’ Whirlpool MOL. It lasted until I believe 1971. At one point my stepfathers family lived with us, 11 people between us all, and those machines did multiple loads 7 days a week.

When I had my Maytag A50, which I used from 77’ to 81’ I kept it in the kitchen and used it at the kitchen sink. This was very convenient, way better than schlepping the laundry to the laundromat. I had a portable Whirlpool dryer in the kitchen too, when I used it I opened the kitchen window a crack and vented it with flexible vent hose that I stored behind the dryer.

For the last 25 years in our current home we’ve had the washer and dryer upstairs, in a closet between the bedrooms, the best setup in my opinion. Having them in a garage would be my least desirable location, but if that was the only option, I could live with it.

Eddie

 

[gusherb]

Having the washer & dryer in the kitchen is common to me. My grandparents house where my mom grew up was a slab home where it was in the kitchen. My parents home has them in the kitchen, my dads rental units have them in the kitchen also. An apartment my sister lived in some time back had a stacked set in the bathroom, I thought that was convenient also. 

 

I personally like the idea of a laundry room next to the kitchen. 

 

[lowefficiency]

>> I can’t understand why anyone would object to having their washing machine in the kitchen

Not at all?

People launder all kinds of things that have no business being anywhere near food and food preparation surfaces.

 

[ea56]

“People launder all kinds of things that have no business being anywhere near food and food preparation surfaces. “

Certainly this is true, and if you have your washer in the kitchen common sense dictates that you would keep anything that was a possible contaminate away from the food and food preparation surfaces. In all the time my family or I had washing machines in the kitchen no one ever became ill as a result of the laundry being washed in the kitchen.

Back when my parents were children many families even bathed in the kitchen as a matter of necessity. There is such a thing as being too germ conscious and as a result failing to have natural immunities to common place bacteria. The same goes with the over use of antibacterial soaps.

Eddie

 

[circlew]

I've only know a couple houses that had laundry equipment in the kitchen. My neighbor V. had her Kenmore dryer (electric) in the kitchen near the back door, with her Maytag wringer washer in the basement. The dryer was mainly used if the weather was unfit to dry on the line. In 1972, they added to the house, and the new Kenmore 800 set in Avocado was placed in the new laundry room, which is also a storage/play area. This room adjoins the kitchen. The other house belonged to a friend when I was in school. The washer was in the kitchen next to the sink. They didn't own a dryer at the time. I think the original laundry was in the basement, but the mother was very heavy, and had trouble with steps. Clothes were hung to dry in an enclosed porch.

Until I reconfigured the basement in the renovation, the laundry was in a large multi-purpose room, which we used for storage and had our ping-pong table in. The new laundry room is a small part of that area, and is approx. 8' x 10'.

I have no desire to have laundry facilities in the kitchen. In addition to having dirty items near food prep areas, I don't want my freshly washed clothes to pick up cooking odors - who wants clothes or linens that smell like onions or fried okra?

Nearly everyone who can afford to place their laundry where they want it will have a separate room for such. I've never seen a washer or dryer in the kitchen of what I'd call a luxury home.

 

[petek]

Most new houses over the last 10-20 years that I have looked at have their laundry equipment located in a hallway off the bedrooms whether it be a single or two story house with a basement. The days of laundry in the basement seem to have ended.

 

[cornutt]

Growing up in the Southeast USA, I saw basically two patterns. Pre-war homes put the laundry equipment wherever it would fit, and the plumbing/electrical could be extended. My paternal grandparents enclosed a small back porch off the kitchen and made it the laundry area. Most of post-war homes built before 1970 had the laundry area in the garage. I think this might have stemmed in part from a (sometimes justified, in the early days) suspicion of automatic washers and the possibility of flooding. Also, many of the young couples buying these houses did not have dryers initially. It was fairly convenient to take the laundry out the garage's back door to the clothesline. I only recall seeing one house in the area in that era that had laundry in the kitchen; it had a place for a combo. IIRC it was a Philco.

Some houses had the "laundry closet", a closet off of a hallway that was just large enough for the machines themselves. It would usually be enclosed with louvered bifold doors, although sometimes it was just left open. They were always dark, and installing a machine in one was a pain.

The WTF one, for me, were the houses that had carports instead of garages, and had the laundry in a detached room off of the carport, not heated and not connected to the house. A lot of these were built in the 1970s. We lived in one for a while. In the winter, it was miserable having to go outside to take the laundry back and forth. And sometimes you couldn't do laundry because the plumbing froze. I remember having to replace the taps for the washer because they froze and then started leaking. Why the freezing didn't damage the washer itself, I can't explain, but it never did. The water heater was also in that room, and I think it heated the room somewhat.

In the late '80s / early '90s, there was a fad around here for having the laundry be in the master bedroom closet. Everyone I knew that had one of these came to hate it eventually: it made the closet damp, the noise meant you couldn't sleep in the bedroom while a load was running, floors often weren't sturdy enough to prevent vibration, and any water leak or overflow was a disaster.

Our laundry is in a room next to the kitchen. That's where my wife wanted it.

 

[circlew]

Southern laundry areas

My Aunt Doris moved into a house in Jackson, MS in 1963 that was a couple years old, and it had a double carport with the laundry room at the back. I remember it having a wall mount electric heater. I didn't ever go there in winter, but the room got extremely hot in summer. Their next house had a nice laundry room off the first floor hall.

When I was a kid, I saw lots of wringer washers on porches in the rural areas.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

So much for "one, if by land; two, if by sea..."

I've seen and been in lots of basement-less houses, including seeing an all-GE Harvest Wheat-appliance set...

But this kitchen-laundry was set in a sort of recessed-adjacent walk-over space--by the kitchen!

-- Dave

 

[mark_wpduet]

Growing up in NC

My grandma had her GM Frigidaire in her bathroom! And the dryer was on the service porch along with an additional refrigerator. When I lived in Knoxville TN in 1995/96 before moving to Lexington, the apartment I rented had full size washer dryer hookups in the Kitchen! Actually, I had forgotten all about that until this post brought back those memories.

 

[gizmo]

Australia

In most of Australia it is illegal to install a washing machine in a kitchen. I have seen a few, however - depends if your local building surveyor is willing to turn a blind eye. You can have a "dishwasher space" at the building stage that ends up having a washing machine installed in it, but there will be another place on the floor plan that was designated a washing machine space and it won't be in the kitchen.

All homes are required to have a laundry trough or sink to facilitate suds saving, even though I don't know of any suds saver washing machines on the market any more. (and not in the last 20 years...) Again you see homes without laundry troughs quite commonly, but technically it is not allowed.