Posted on: Monday, June 28, 2004

ABOUT MEN
It's my laundry, my lifestyle

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

According to reports I'm receiving, the laundry room is the latest comfort zone in an American house.

Then again, we knew that all along in Hawai'i, where a lot of our laundry rooms have always served double duty as carports, lanai or places to drink beer.

I discovered how hip my carport/laundry was several months ago when the New York Times reported on a new $2,000 washer and dryer line ("fabric care system") that is supposedly sweeping upscale America.

The new Duet system is capable of doing up to 22 bath towels in a single load. (Think of the hamper you'd need and the smell you'd have if you waited for 22 showers before doing the laundry!)

It's being marketed along with a series of products that will turn an ordinary laundry area into the new family gathering place, much the same way great rooms were all once the rage in Central O'ahu developments. The machines by Whirlpool aren't just practical, but classy-looking, too, featuring a futuristic design and new color schemes such as "biscuit on biscuit."

Maybe in the rest of America such designs are necessary to improve a laundry area's ambiance, but here in Hawai'i we've always thought of the washing machine as part of our indoor-outdoor lifestyle.

In my case, the laundry/lanai includes an area covered by translucent, corrugated plastic which protects a papa-san style reading chair, Tahitian-style coconut grater, chili-pepper Christmas lights, a moving (if somewhat moldy) lighted Hamm's beer sign, not-so-portable boom box with five Grateful Dead CDs, and a recycling box perfectly positioned to receive empty beer cans without leaving the aforementioned chair.

Oh, yeah, there's a rusting washer, and an even more-rusting dryer that are hidden by flower-print covers hand-made by my wife.

I admit, I'm a laundry kind of guy. I love to surprise my wife by taking a big handful of clothes, putting them through the washer and dryer, and leaving them for her to discover later in the week. Sadly, ironing is not among my pleasures.

Anyway, while the washing machine is going, I grab a beer, a book and the latest CD ("Live Dead," circa 1972), turn on the Hamm's sign and settle into the papa-san chair to listen for the sound of change falling out of my tumbling pockets.

I don't know how it could get any better than that.

Unless, of course, I had one of those $2,000 Duet models to go along with the Sub-Zero freezer and big Viking gas range and high- definition TV and all those other high-end appliances that I don't have either.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.