Things I Won't Miss about the Apartment: Baths and Laundry

Our next stop on the tour of reasons we won't miss apartment living is the bathroom.

The Bathroom

The first problem: that header is singular. When Pat and I first decided to move into our current small apartment, it was part of our plan to save money for one year before buying a home. Well, life happened and it's been two years with one bathroom. One shower, one toilet, two sinks (marriage saver). There's barely any storage here either, so we leave the stuff we use daily on the counters. That wall-mounted shelf helps it stay tidy-ish, but it's all in plain sight.

There's a small linen closet which houses the cats' litter box so at least one door to the bathroom has to be open all the time. We try to store clean towels there, but Atticus inevitably curls up in the warm linens and they all have to be washed again.

As if that's not bad enough, our cats know how to open every door in the A.P.T. I realize this knowledge won't leave them when we move into our house, but at least they won't be playing footsie under the door from the master to the bathroom as we sleep.

Our bathroom also completes our apartment's figure eight shape, so Boone and Atty can chase each other all day long. Although it's fun to watch a 14 lb. cat take on an 80 lb. dog, I'd prefer for them not to bump into me while I get ready in the morning.

Our Soon-to-be Bathrooms

 Images property of Standard Pacific Homes

Soon, we will have two and a half baths. Two tubs, one walk-in shower, three toilets, and four sinks of freedom. The cats' could have their own bathroom if they wanted, but they won't need it because they will have their own special space in the laundry room.

That's a nice segue.

Our Laundry Room

...errr, closet. Laundry closet. In the only bathroom. We have two antiquated machines, which, to be fair, is better than many apartments and definitely better than a laundromat. There's a small wire shelf that holds the three types of detergent I require (is that bad?) and not much else. The fabric softener, stain removers, washing machine cleaner, and Dryel have to live on a ledge that supports our water heater. And that ledge is sharp and it's located exactly where your head goes when you move clothes from the washer to the dryer.

Our Soon-to-be Laundry room

Wish I had a picture; it's beautiful.

I've always been bothered by the inefficiency of a home where all the bedrooms are upstairs and the laundry room is downstairs. I have a bit of an infatuation with laundry rooms and an upstairs locale was high on my list of must haves when we were looking at houses (funny, because the hubbers does most of our laundry). So yes, it will be upstairs.

Our laundry room is big enough to house more cabinets than our current kitchen, but it won't have that when we move in. One of my great, equity-adding ideas was to not have our builder install any cabinets in our laundry room. For the time being, we'll live with wire shelves (better than our current laundry room) and put cabinets in down the line when we can afford to do it right. Hanging space for drying? Yes. Beautiful storage for my Tide arsenal? Yes. Folding space? Of course! Maybe even a jetted sink for handwashing delicates (ha!). That way when we resell, women will be falling over my laundry room upgrades. And we'll pocket the profit, not our builder.