Laundry in kitchen

[Glenn]

I had some Vietnamese tenants all lined up to rent a 4 bedroom house yesterday. They were excited and I was happy. Then they noticed that the laundry was a hide away thing off the kitchen.
They had a quick discussion in their own language apologised to me and marched off.
I wonder if any of you other landlords have found this problem with Vietnamese tenants.

[Win K]

no - but did have it with an older Maori couple.

Tapu - food and cleaning to be separate.

[Glenn]

Yes Win you have it. Tapu.
They do not like their clothes to smell the same as their cooking.

[rueben]

I always thought it was quite strange that so many English houses have the washing machine in the kitchen. I always imagine full hampers of dirty clothes in the middle of the kitchen, ready to be stuffed in there... yick.

So I can see why some wouldn't like the laundry near to the kitchen - even behind folding doors.

One of the houses we built I put the laundry behind folding doors in the main bathroom (it was a good size). It was fantastic. Drop the kids in the bath and load that washing machine right up. Multi-tasking at its best...

[Glenn]

Need over comes all.

Nice little update on the problem.
The family changed their mind. They have taken the property after all despite the laundry being in the kitchen. So I got my $380 per week for the house.
But today another interesting cultural issue surfaced. The tenancy does not start until Saturday but today Tuesday they asked for the keys. They want to carry out some sort of cultural cleansing of the property.
I wonder what they do to kick out the kiwi devils and invite their spirits in. I once had someone want to have their guru bless a house before they moved in. They were concerned to make sure I had killed all the silverfish first otherwise they feared the silver fish would be blessed and then I would never be able to kill the rotten little bugs.
Perhaps us landlords need to go to some sort of training school to teach us all about these things. I wonder if Poormastery could comment on any good property training schools that might cover this subject.