I never thought of myself as having much interest in indoor spaces. Generally, I identify as someone who prefers to be outdoors, and it was easy to live like that up in the tropics. Since moving down to Melbourne, though, I’ve come to appreciate the virtues of a beautiful indoor environment and its ability to enhance one’s quality of life.
This was especially apparent to me over winter – my first in Victoria. It was quite a shock to the system! Fortunately for unprepared me, the house I moved into featured a newly renovated bathroom with an epic claw-foot bathtub. It also boasts a designer kitchen with a wood fire, gas stove and lots of recycled timber. As I discovered, this is just the way I like it in this climate!
Over summer, these things won’t be as necessary to my wellbeing – at least, here’s hoping. But they’ve got me more than a bit sold on dreaming up luxuriant bathroom concepts and custom kitchen design ideas. It’s a problem, actually – I’m having all these runaway thoughts on interior makeovers, and no outlet for them. I mean, it would be ridiculous to remodel the kitchen and bathroom at my house.
What I can do is turn my attention to coming up with laundry renovation ideas. Melbourne folk need to listen up: laundries are your new favourite room. I’m calling it. Seriously – hear me out. When I lived up in Cairns, I washed everything by hand in big ceramic basins, and dried them in the sun. It was really rewarding, actually, and saved me heaps of money on power bills.
I realise that doing laundry like that would be a bit more challenging in Melbourne, but I think it’s achievable. It stacks nicely with my general philosophy on domestic work, which is that I’d sooner do it the low-tech way and connect fully with the task than outsource it to a machine. That said, I might be happy to shell out on an amazing interior designer to adapt my house for facilitating that.