Below Stairs Beauty: 21 Useful & Beautiful Buys For Your Utility Room
If we could move into the Downton kitchen, frankly we would. These buys recreate that old school domesticity with flair, quality and abiding beauty.
It is an accepted fact of the aging process that, as we put away childish things, what we dream of tends to take on a distinctly more domestic flavour. How many of us would have declared our deep longing for a utility room in our twenties? And yet, a handful of years on, who wouldn’t harbour such reveries of somewhere to order and store the stuff of everyday life? Perfect ironing boards and serious brushes; proper laundry baskets and enamel tins for the stashing of pegs and the like: these are the stuff of which homely heaven is made.
Ironing Boards & Covers
There are two distinct camps when it comes to ironing: those who find it therapeutic and those who don’t do it at all. If you are of the former persuasion, a superior board elevates the whole pursuit no end.
Laundry
Doing laundry may not be one of life’s most glamorous tasks but it certainly is satisfying when it’s all done, dusted and folded neatly away. They key is to keep order – not least with a good basket to contain all the laundry-in-waiting, after which hanging efficiently out to dry follows.
Storage
A place for everything and everything in its place. That well-worn phrase is one we find ourselves trumpeting with ever greater – and at times bordering on religious – fervour as time marches on. After all, keeping a place spick and span is a good deal easier when everything has an allocated home. These utilitarian caddies make the pursuit of tidy spaces all the more achievable.
Cleaning Products
The supermarket shelves may still be full of products that contain harsh chemicals. But the good news is that a flurry of brands now abound, their raison d’etre to purvey natural products that are kinder both to the environment and to our bodies.
Cleaning Brushes
If you’re going to scrub, you may as well do so properly. The resurgence of the well-constructed scrubbing brush is something to behold for cleaning nerds – and these are the ones we love the most.
Tea Towels
Hard-working and indispensable, a good tea towel is ultra-useful for everything from washing up to mopping up spills – and, chosen well, it can even look good too.
By
Nancy Alsop
·
April 2024
Nancy is a magpie for the best in design and culture.
