Allison, I love your laundry room! I wish I had a bigger laundry room but just having one across from my bedroom and not in a tiny little closet and not having to go to the laundry mat is one of the nice features that sold me on the townhouse I bought a little less than 11 years ago. Where are your hampers? I just love your taste of knowing where everything should be in a room to create rooms with both class and beauty. I just bought two white wicker hampers with two compartments at Fran's Wicker & Rattan Furniture Store and were amazed at the just about no smell. They have velcro cotton drawstring bags inside and are very well sealed. I aired them out for a week so they will have no smell at all. I am glad I went with such pretty hampers that were reasonably priced for the quality. Now I have to take the suggestions I got from others on making the rest of the room nice when I have time.

Mr Clean magic erasers don't have bleach in them. Some examples do seem to have detergent built in. I would attack the paint spatters with a single-edge razor blade, then any remaining spots with lacquer thinner. Barkeeper's Friend is very effective on rust stains, because it has some oxalic acid in its recipe, other than that the abrasive is mild like Bon Ami. A 1910 house that I have worked on had two of those sinks, each in one of the housekeeping/janitor closets. Imagine a house with 2 plumbed janitor closets; they had a full staff, like Downton Abbey!

My father-in-law had Meniere's disease that caused him to retire a few years early from being a Minister of the Gospel. His specialist told him he had no cure for the condition, but since it seems to be associated with the inner ear, it will reduce with hearing loss, and that is what happened to him. One day when at an airport on his way to a convention, an attack struck him. The airport security was convinced that he was either drunk or high on something and locked him up in the drunk tank, and would not let him out until his wife came to pick him up. He was unable to convince them that he had a medical condition that was the cause. This episode made him consider retiring a few years early.

For those that have kids do their own laundry don’t they waste water then? Maybe, but it's a learning experience for them, so worthwhile. While I can see the advantages, I'm not sure it is necessary either. Oh, of course it's not necessary. I think even the people who advocate for the idea don't think it's a necessity. Back to laundry, my upstairs laundry room is pretty small so the room is always full of clothes. I don't think size of the room is always the issue -- a small but well designed room can be more functional than a larger space. For what it's worth, my pantry /laundry room is pretty big -- about 15x7 -- but it's a horribly designed space. You have to walk through the kitchen to reach it, and it has a useless exterior door. The space could've been laid out so much better. And it's so far from the bedrooms that "folded loads" end up left on top of the machines -- then College Girl comes and pulls an item out of the middle, and they topple over. I don't really want a bigger laundry room, but I do wish I had a space for "waiting loads" and a location closer to the bedrooms so it wouldn't feel like such a chore to carry finished loads literally the length of the house. We easily have two loads of laundry a day. This'll change for you -- eventually. I only have one kid at home now, and she's only home part-time. My husband is retired, so he doesn't wear business clothes /re-uses jeans for several days. In the summer when I don't work, my laundry is downright easy! Something to look forward to in retirement. I'd consider doing stackable compact machines upstairs and then larger capacity machines that could handle things like sleeping bags or dog beds downstairs. I'm definitely going to downsize our machines when they need replacing. 10-12 years ago I bought large front-loaders, and I appreciated the large loads they could hold -- but, oh, they are space hogs. Large items -- sleeping bags and dog beds, as you mentioned -- don't get washed all that often. If I have to take them to a laundry mat or a cleaner, it would be okay. I counted the TV sets in the suite: 7. Seven. In the master suite. Seven? How can that possibly be? I'm trying to imagine where they could go: One in the bed chamber, one for the tub, one for a sitting area ... this is like a train wreck. I have to know! Surely no one watches TV in the closet?