Laundry Chutes: Pros & Cons

I think at first it was mostly a sentimental attachment.  In our new house full of DIY projects I had gained one feature I always wanted: a laundry chute from the upstairs to the laundry room below.   My grandparents had one in their home; and my cousins, siblings and I spent many fun-filled hours dropping items from the 2nd floor, racing down the two stories to the basement, and retrieving them from the pile on the floor.  Then when that got old, we just hollered to one another through the chute doors and could be heard throughout the house (looking back, I’m sure my grandmother LOVED this game!).

Now that I’m the mom using it, I love it just as much.  We all just throw our dirty clothes down the chute at the end of the day, so there are no hampers to carry around, no musty smells from sweaty little boys’ outfits, and I’ve even almost gotten Fred to use the chute consistently as an alternative to his life-long habit of just dropping his old clothes on the floor (thanks, so much, Mom-in-law, for allowing that to fly in your house).

But builders are sometimes resistent to add laundry chutes to homes, these days.  My aunt and uncle wanted one in their vacation home (it’s in the genes, I guess), and a couple builders they consulted just flat-out refused to install them.  So they went with one who would.  Their experience  got me researching.  What are the actual risks?  Since we’re going to need to move ours eventually to make room for a pantry relocation, would we want to just eliminate it altogether?

After some reading, here’s what I’ve found:

The Cons:

• Like stairwells, laundry chutes are an opening that can allow a fire to spread from one floor of a house to another more rapidly.
• Unsupervised children may try to throw pets – or each other – down the chute, thinking it’s a slide.
• The bottom of the chute dictates furniture and appliance placement in the room below.  Laundry shouldn’t fall into a spot that could create a fire or tripping hazard.

The Pros:

• Hampers can stay in the laundry room – a place to store sorted laundry before washing.  They don’t need to be lugged up and down the stairs, and the laundry lands right next to the washing machine.
• Everyone’s laundry goes to the same place.  As the one with primary laundry duties in our home, I appreciate not having to go room-to-room to collect the dirty clothes.  And it was easy to convince our kids, from toddlerhood on, to use the chute!
• Most of the hazard can be prevented with a good design.  My aunt’s and uncle’s, for example, opens into a wall cabinet in the laundry room at the bottom and is situated behind a bathroom door and up on the top of a built-up knee wall, above small-child height.  Their grandkids don’t even know it’s there.

We have pretty much decided to keep ours as well, even when we do need to move it.  As we plan on adding more kids to our family – meaning even MORE clothes for me to cycle through - I love the convenience too much to give it up.  And yes, every once in a while, I do use the chute to call to my kids on the other floor of the house.  Just like old times.

What do you think?  What “little thing” about your house is your favorite?  Do you have pros/cons I missed to share about these chutes?

by: Kim | January 21, 2009 | filed in: Fixtures & Furnishings
Related Tags: laundry chute

share this article: stumble digg

• 

Possibly Related Articles on this Site:

• Paying Down a Mortgage Early: Pros and Cons
• Paint Worth the Price? Valspar, Duron, Behr, and Ralph
• Primer Worth the Price? Valspar, Behr, and Kilz Review
• Craftsman Snow Blower Review (Model #88957, Two-stage S