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Where should a washing machine go?


RoseGoesToYale

Washing machine location  

131 members have voted

  1. 1. Where should a clothes washer and/or dryer go?

    • Kitchen
      16
    • Bathroom
      14
    • Separate room (i.e. laundry room, utility room)
      75
    • Its own small closet somewhere
      6
    • Bedroom
      1
    • Basement/Attic
      12
    • In an external building/shed
      1
    • COMMUNAL LAUNDRY FACILITIES!!
      6

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RoseGoesToYale

Inspired by this comic (which I love to death). Is it really a geographical difference? Where should a washing machine go?

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I wish my laundry machines were in my bathroom, but alas my bathroom is too small and they are in the kitchen instead. (In a special closet.)

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My kitchen is the only spot with a water connection, so there's that. Best spot is the basement, no issues doing laundry at 3am or some such.

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Because they're heavy and they can leak, the correct place for a laundry machine is the basement, whether it's in a house or an apartment complex.

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Captain_Tass

In Greece, very few homes have basements like the american ones. The basements in most homes are mostly uninhabitable and used strictly as storage spaces or garages. Homes have washing machines either in bathrooms or in seperate rooms, as the kitchens are reserved for the dishwashers.

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Just now, Karst said:

Because they're heavy and they can leak, the correct place for a laundry machine is the basement, whether it's in a house or an apartment complex.

But what if there is no basement?

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Doing laundry in the bathroom seems vaguely unsanitary.

In houses I've been in that don't have a basement, the laundry machine is usually in a closet.

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Custard Cream

Here in the UK, most people have the washing machine in the kitchen, unless they are fortunate enough to have a separate utility room.

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It's different in different countries, but in the USA, it still varies by region.  In the desert Southwest, the washers/dryers are often in the garage,  or a storage closet off the garage or back porch. It never gets cold enough to freeze the pipes and no one wants the dryer heating up the house. 

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Separate room.

Namely laundry room.

But in all bizarreness my mom's washer and dryer is in the garage yet when we had our apartment we put it into the spare bathroom.

So that happened.

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I've never thought about putting it the kitchen. I love learning things about other countries. Do you put the dryer in the kitchen too? if so you must have large kitchens or small washing machines. Most places in the USA either have a separate room/closet, or it goes outside in a garage or a basement in some apartment complexes.  

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Ours has always been in the cellar; some Germans put it in their bathroom. Kitchen is a UK thing as far as I know.

Currently we've got two washing machines for 50 people. You'll be surprised but it works.

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51 minutes ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Where should a washing machine go?

INowhere, it should stay just where it is.

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Grumpy Alien

Laundry/utility room 

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Here there's usually a laundry and laundry sink, usually near or next to a bathroom/toilet.

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everywhere and nowhere

My washing machine is in the toilet. I also don't have a dishwasher, I do the dishes by hand (due to my allergy, in rubber gloves). And, generally, the mentions of garages and laundry rooms make me wonder: do Americans realise that not everyone is living in a free-standing house? In Europe most people in the cities live in apartments, not separate houses.

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Basement. It's where it's been in both places I've lived since moving out from my family, too.

 

Growing up, we had it (along with the dryer, the deep-freeze trunk, and the wall rack of my dad's tools) in a kind of storage room that, while attached to our house, was only accessible by moving through our back yard. I think basement is more practical.

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Ours is in the kitchen. No other place for it, and if we moved it that would be installing new water and gas lines.

 

Never lived in a place big enough to have a dedicated room for it, so not sure how I feel about that.

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I've always been amazed by how massively washing machine locations vary from country to country. In some, it's normal for them to be in the KITCHEN (that's always blown my mind), in some the basement, in some they go in the bathroom (that makes more sense to me), and here in NZ we almost always have a separate little room called the laundry where the washing machine and dryer are housed, and it's usually beside the back door. No matter how poor you are or how tiny your house, there's almost always that separate little space for your laundry. Here's mine:

 

ressize-23

 

That's squished between the kitchen and the back door, but still its own little room shut off from the rest of the house!! :P 

 

PS just to clarify, even in cramped apartment blocks etc here the laundry is still almost always cordoned off somehow, even if it's just a little corner. That corner is usually near the back door for some reason, wherever that happens to be in the home!

 

 

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firewallflower

Basement, unless you don't have one or there's a specific reason why that wouldn't work. That's what I'm used to, anyway - though the bathroom makes some sense to me too.

 

Or alternatively, wherever you please. Or scrap the appliances altogether, get a washboard and clothesline, and win my undying admiration.

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54 minutes ago, firewallflower said:

get a washboard and clothesline

I once lived in a place (not a house or apartment) with no kitchen or laundry or anything, it was just a bedroom and a shower (un-permitted, no one was meant to live there so my rent was super cheap lol). I'd put the washing in the shower with me after I'd cleaned myself, squirt a bit of shampoo on, and while the hot water ran over it I'd all stomp on it all. Then stomp a bit more after the water is turned off to drain it and hang it on a clothes horse in front of a window. Much easier than a washboard (and honestly, less effort than actually using the washing machine, haha!! I just have too much washing to do that these days) :P 

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Grumpy Alien

In my region of the US (northeast coast), pretty much everyone has a laundry room or utility area. Much like what Pan said, it doesn’t matter how small the home is. My mom has a bungalow and the laundry room is a sort of corridor next to the kitchen by the back door and door to the garage. It has a washer, dryer, big sink, and storage units. That’s it. There’s walking space only. But it's its own space. Keeps it easy to do laundry and keeps the clothes clean. 

 

I find it difficult in the UK to do laundry without dropping something on the kitchen floor (which I feel isn’t as clean with all the food being dropped) and shuffling laundry baskets in and out of the kitchen. It’s awkward. It feels weird, like having a toilet in the living room or a bed in the hallway. No me gusta.

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@Pan Ficto. (on hiatus?) I've done something similar on trips where I ran out of clothes.  Just washing things in a sink with bar soap usually works fine.  The one issue is that cotton is very slow to dry if you don't have access to either a dryer or a proper clothesline.

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8 minutes ago, Kimchi Peanut said:

I find it difficult in the UK to do laundry without dropping something on the kitchen floor (which I feel isn’t as clean with all the food being dropped) and shuffling laundry baskets in and out of the kitchen. It’s awkward. It feels weird, like having a toilet in the living room or a bed in the hallway. No me gusta.

EXACTLY!! That's why I feel so weird about the idea of having a washing machine in the kitchen, which I always see in UK tv shows. I don't even let my kids wear their socks in the kitchen, haha. I know it's weird, I just feel like the kitchen is the last place clean clothes should be unless you're wearing them while you cook!! and even then, I wear an apron etc. It would frustrate me endlessly I think!

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Duke Memphis

Laundry room next to the bathroom. That's ideal for me.

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Ours is in a bedroom, though right now my dad uses that as his office. It’s absolutely terrible, as he doesn’t want anyone to use it while he’s “working” and he just sits in there pretending to work at all odd hours. Sorry, but you are not in a business that is working on a Sunday night, or really after standard “business” hours. We think it was previously not in there and probably in the basement, but someone had it moved. We do have a washer in the basement too, but it has never been hooked up. 

In our old house, it was in a bathroom. 

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Washing machine in an attic? :lol:

 

Where I have lived in various parts of the US, in houses it's either been in the garage or a laundry room (in my current house the laundry room is its own room in the basement), and in apartments they've been in a separate laundry room shared by all tenants. But now that I think about it, in the house I grew up in in southern California, the washer and dryer were in the kitchen. It was a galley-type kitchen, that is, a long room with an aisle down the middle and appliances all on one side. So it was fridge, stove, washer and dryer side by side.

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Whenever I've lived in a place that had a washer and dryer they were either in the garage or a small closet. My current apartment complex as well as the last complex I lived in both have communal laundry rooms where you have to pay to use them though.

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