Laundry engineering.

About two months ago we moved into our new house, designed to fit our somewhat unique lifestyle.  Among the built-in features is a second-floor laundry room.  It's lighted and spacious, with front-loading machines and space on top of them for folding, a hanging rod and places for baskets, and also room for our diaper changing table.   

We assigned a workable, comfortable laundry room high priority.  (Consequently the bedrooms are smaller than is usual in new-construction houses.)  In the last six months or so before we moved, I developed the expectation that I would cheerfully wash, dry, and fold two baskets of laundry every day, as soon as we moved into the new house with the nice new laundry room.  Surely it would be easier than descending two flights of narrow, uneven stairs to the damp and cobwebby duplex basement and climbing up again with full baskets.

Of course, it isn't exactly easier than what I was really doing, which was letting Mark descend two flights of narrow, uneven stairs to the damp and cobwebby duplex basement, etc. Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out how to fit laundry into my day. 

I'm incrementally making improvements in the laundry algorithm.  The first step was to stop Mark's practice of going round the house with an empty basket and collecting tablecloths, dishcloths, bath towels wet diapers, his clothes, my clothes, kids' clothes, all together into one mixed-up load.  I have a generous amount of folding and sorting space in the new laundry room, but not enough to sort that.  I bought new laundry baskets and put one in each closet to collect the different kinds of laundry, and decreed a ban on future laundry-mixing.

(Mark: But... I don't have enough laundry in any of these individual baskets to make a full load!

Me:  Good.  Laundry's done for today. 

Mark: <blank look>

Me:  We just increased our surge tank capacity.  Consequently, we have the opportunity for a partial shutdown.

Mark:  Ah.)

(N.B.  Actually, it wasn't quite like that, but I'm playing the scene for comic effect here.)

That innovation set the stage for a second one a bit later.  I had been putting the kids' clothes on hangers upstairs in the laundry room, then carrying it down to hang it in their closet on the first floor.  But then, after some experimentation, I discovered that the laundry output increased incrementally if instead I carried their clothes down in baskets, fetched kid-size hangers from the closet, clothed the hangers while seated at the kitchen table, and then returned the clothes to the closet rod.  I think that this productivity increase is due to the elimination of the bottlenecking step of remembering to carry empty kid-size hangers upstairs.    (Fortunately, I have already incorporated clearing the kitchen table into my daily routine, or there would be another bottleneck along this particular process path.)

There's still plenty of room for improvement.  I told Mark this morning that what I really need is a pilot-scale laundry room, and pilot-scale laundry to accompany it.  He said I needed direct-something-or-other simulation instead.   I forget what, as it was a term I wasn't familiar with.  But as I'm likely to get neither,  I guess I'll have to stick with tinkering with my process on-line.  Good thing I don't have any technicians, or I'd have to buy them a lot of pizza.

Comments

[Jamie]

We used to have a top floor washing machine in another apartment. One day the supply hose came loose unexpectedly inside the machine and caused a flood through the downstairs ceiling. Ever since, tales of upstairs laundry give me the shudders. Is there a patron saint for plumbers? If I knew of one, I would say a quick prayer for tight connections for you.

[Christopher Tyler]

I'm sure you could design a nice pilot-scale laundry facility with a few doll clothes and the bathroom sink. The equipment, however, will be different enough that scale-up will become problematic.

[bearing]

Jamie,

Secondary containment is an important factor in any design that involves liquid handling...

Accordingly, my washing machine has a collection pan under it. It drains into the basement via a PVC pipe that dumps onto the bare concrete a couple of feet away from the same floor drain that's supposed to save us if the water heater leaks.

The one aspect of this protection system that I have not checked is whether the collection pan is large enough to hold one wash cycle's worth of water, should the overflow pipe become clogged.

But prayers to St. Vincent Ferrer, patron saint of plumbers, would still be lovely. While you're at it, say one for my late grandfather Barney, who was a plumber for many years...