The Laundry Situation

As a contrast to that last warm-and-fuzzy post, I think it's time to reveal one of the dark horrors of the Kirkborough House.

The laundry room.

The laundry facilities at the Kirkborough House have taken quite a bit of getting used to. It was actually a few days before I even felt comfortable going *into* the laundry room, let alone wash a load of clothes in there.

The laundry room is essentially a long and skinny closet with a stone floor that's always moist and clammy to the touch. When we first moved in, the room was cluttered with all kinds of cleaning supplies and miscellaneous crazy odds-and-ends. There were more cleaning products than a reasonable person could possibly use in five years of scrubbing the house raw. I found six individual bottles of window cleaner, five cans of furniture polish, at least seven tins of shoe polish, and enough half-used bathroom cleaner to fill an entire garbage bag. The weirdest thing I found in the laundry room was a box of dog diapers.

That’s right. Dog diapers.

We've made a lot of changes to the other rooms in the house to make them more liveable. In the laundry room, there's really nothing that can even be done to improve things. This is what the laundry room looks like today.

It's clean and organized, but still more like a laundry dungeon than a laundry room.

Oh! And I haven't even mentioned the best part yet.

When we were signing the contract to move in, one of our conditions was that the landlord needed to install a washer, dryer, and dishwasher. (For some reason, the house didn't have any of those appliances in it when Matt originally came to look at the place. I'm still not exactly sure how the previous tenants managed to actually live here? I mean, I get that a dishwasher is a luxury. But a clothes washer? Kind of essential.)

So, who's the go-to guy aroud the Kirkborough House for fix-it projects?

Yep. You guesed it. Ken.

Instead of getting a new washer, dryer, and dishwasher, Ken convinced the landlord to let him sell him "refurbished" appliances. Translation: Ken found the appliances god knows where, fixed them up, and then installed them himself. The result is kind of a Franknstein effect-- Nothing matches, and it's anyone's guess where he found the used parts to make the machines run.

But, that's not even the best part. Ready?

   

When Ken installed the dishwasher, he put it in a position that makes it impossible to open the bottom door all the way. 3/4 of the way down, the door butts up against the stone wall. This means we can't actually load the bottom half of the dishwasher. If I put a plate in front part of the bottom rack, it immediately rolls right to the back with a SMACK. It’s maddening.

To sweeten the deal, Ken made some sort of key mistake when wiring or grounding the machines. As a result, every time I touched the inside of the dishwasher, it gave me a pretty hearty and unpleasant electric shock. When we complained to Ken about the shocks, he tried to convince us that it was normal for an appliance to shock the user occasionally. His argument was that the dishwasher, when wet, would obviously be prone to giving out a mild shock.

My argument was that any appliance *designed* to get wet shouldn’t be shocking anyone. Ever.

Eventually, we got Ken to come over and fix the thing. So, no more shocks. But for a week and a half when we first moved in, I refused to touch the appliances in the laundry room, and never set foot in the place without wearing rubber-soled shoes.

On a related note, here's what laundry soap looks like out here:

It comes in two varieties, “biological” and “non-biological.” Your guess is as good as mine as to what that might mean. I'm still working that one out. (“Biological” detergent sounds gross to me. Like, “biohazard.” Or something made from cast-off animal parts.)