Lindy-Lu Enjoys the View

For most of my adult life I lived in rented apartments. Dingy laundry rooms and laundromats were the norm. I once spent an hour with a police officer outside a Santa Rosa laundromat trying to reason with the woman who stole an entire dryer-full of my clothes. I managed to get everything back.

In 1996, my husband and I bought a house together with a washer and dryer hook-up in the garage. I figured life couldn’t get better than that.  Sure, we had rats and cockroaches out there, and it got pretty hot mid-July, but I didn’t have to leave home to make clothes clean. Life was good.

When we remodeled our house seven years ago, the architect suggested an indoor laundry room as part of the expansion and my heart did a little dance. It would be a laundry room with a view! Our small-lot house is a mere five feet from the neighbor’s fence, but oh the possibilities. The windowed door looks out on three glorious vines, Hardenbergia and two Star Jasmine. Cyclamen grow along the side of the house and Baby Tears have infiltrated the walkway, their tiny leaves tucked in close to the stone.  The greenery keeps me company as I wash, dry and fold for my family of four, an earthy reminder of the bounty of life’s gifts.