Life in the Boomer Lane has never really thought about her favorite room of the house, but assumes it would be the kitchen because of its proximity to the refrigerator. She had a real estate appointment the other day in which the homeowner, in showing her the recently-designed kitchen in his vintage home, said he created the sink area as an homage to his mom, who loved to prepare dinner while looking out at the bank of windows that overlooked the garden.
As he spoke, LBL whizzed out momentarily on what would be people's favorite rooms in their own homes. She guesses that one's favorite room might depend partly on what stage of life they were in. For example, children would most likely prefer the play room or the room with the TV.
Teens would prefer the garage, as long as the garage contained a car that they were holding the keys to. On the other hand, LBL never placed cars in any garage she owned, and, at age 15, one of LBL's three children asked LBL if he could use the garage as a "hang out, club room-type place." She couldn't see why not, and so her garage rapidly became the gathering spot for her son and his friends. It wasn't until months later that LBL discovered what was actually going on in the garage when she found upturned empty plastic paint containers with dozens of burnt matches on top. With LBL's tacit approval, her son had become the most popular kid in the neighborhood.
Young, childless marrieds would most likely prefer the bedroom, where they could use their youthful bodies to perfect all the exciting moves that would lead to their ultimately producing offspring who would quickly end all the fun. That very same bedroom would then be a place they would now visit very infrequently, or a space that they would share with a screaming, boob-obsessed infant.
Older adults might switch fascination from the bedroom to the bathroom, where one's sexual moves would be replaced by the desire for regular movements. Or, they might choose whichever room in the house would be their napping place.
LBL would never, in any of these musings, have considered the laundry room as one's favorite place, until that same homeowner continued by saying that his mom loved to be in the laundry room more than anywhere else in the house. It was here that she efficiently sorted, washed, folded and ironed the clothing of her family of eight. She derived great comfort in knowing that her husband could go out into the business world with freshly starched and ironed shirts, and her children could go out into their world, clean and well-cared for. The act of doing laundry used both her prodigious organizational talents as well as her nurturing ones. For her, it was an act of love, every bit as much as an act of necessity.
While LBL could never relate to the ironing part (her own ironing used to occur as infrequently as possible), she does remember washing and folding her children's clothes, at first mesmerized with the tiny garments and then watching through the years as the little items became larger and larger as they ran through her hands. It was another version of watching her children grow.
LBL thanks the homeowner for triggering all of these thoughts she now shares with her readers. And, now that she has shared these, she can resume thinking about the refrigerator. Or maybe about all that hot sex in her pre-parenthood days.Or maybe combining both into the same thought. It's almost too much for her brain to contemplate.