The Laundry Room

As we continue the tour around our new house, let me welcome you to our small laundry room which is downstairs. Although it is quite tiny, it is able to fit a washer, dryer, sink, floor drain and a storage area.

As a housewife with a small baby, the kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms are probably the most important areas of the house to me. We are using cloth diapers on Mary so I was excited and a bit nervous to try out our new laundry machine. 

As you can see, I did mange to get the laundry machine to work and I think I have sort of figured out the programs. I was unable to find a manual for it, although I did look online in addition to the cabinets around the house.

One thing that surprised me about cloth diapering was how passionate cloth diaper users are about various cleaning methods. If you look online, there are many different suggestions about the best detergent to use, the right temperature, the preferred cycle, which machines work well, how to add more water to make sure your diapers get fully rinsed... it goes on and on.

My method at home was to do a cold water wash with detergent to get the stains out and then to do a hot water wash with non-chlorine bleach to sanitize. After that I would run them through one more time with vinegar as a fabric softener (all I really needed was a rinse and spin cycle but I couldn't figure out how to get my washer to do that). Here I've opted out of the vinegar rinse cycle and instead stick with my original two. So far Mary hasn't had any rashes and the diapers look very clean when they come out. Yay!

Ok, that was probably way more than you wanted to know about washing diapers! Moving on to the dryer...

I was able to find a manual for the dryer in one of the kitchen cabinets and, as I flipped through it, I was surprised to note how charming our dryer is.

She appears to have quite a sweet disposition along with some fairly dreamy eyes. Unfortunately, she doesn't actually work very well. My guess is that she is a bit past her prime. Although I was able to get her to turn on and run some cycles, the diapers come out just about as damp as when they went in. Even after 2 hours of drying time.

And I had such high hopes for her!

So now I have resorted to air drying the cloth diapers as well as the rest of our clothes. Thank goodness there are lots of drying racks!

One other interesting thing about the laundry room is that there is a big drain on the floor (similar to one you might find in a restaurant kitchen in the states). This allows the water to drain out to the sewer in case there is ever a bad leak. Norwegians are very concerned about flooding and these big floor drains can also be found in the bathroom. It seems like a very good idea to me! I'll post pictures of the bathroom one a little later. 

And now I'd better go hang up some laundry while Mary is asleep! 

~ElizabethRose~