Visit any of the new estates coming up in Nairobi and other urban areas across the country and you will notice that one feature is increasingly hard to find: a clothesline. There are no more pieces of clothing fluttering from balconies, such as baby towels, pairs of socks or bedsheets clipped to wooden pegs. Laundry is being designed out of sight in modern apartments, with the washing machine being incorporated into the design.
For decades, the standard three-bedroom home came with a yard or at least two metal poles dedicated to drying clothes in the sun. Today, the equivalent space may be a compact laundry nook inside the house, often no bigger than a pantry. It will have plumbing and drainage, as well as a power socket for a washing machine and sometimes another for a tumble dryer.
