BrickUnderground

As part of his ambitious re-zoning proposal, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this morning plans to designate new neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods within the city*, citing both demand from developers, confusion among renters, widely accepted and circulated cliches, and a successful pilot program in Quooklyn.

Leave it to Cate Blanchett to make laundry sound so noble: "An actress once advised me, 'Make sure you do your own laundry. It will keep you honest',” she has supposedly intoned. In this city, doing your laundry can also drive you crazy. Nowhere else are washers and dryers so fetishized, perhaps because so many of us have to do without them.

In this new feature, we pick properties for you to check out on open-house weekends.

A two-bedroom on the Upper West Side—for under $1 million—in an inventory-crunched market? Not quite mission impossible, but it's close. According to StreetEasy, there are, as of this writing, barely three dozen on the market, with just a few handfuls hosting open houses this weekend.

For anyone who's ever side-eyed that neighbor who uses all the building's machines at once, juggled bottles of detergent on the way to the local laundromat, or wondered what the hell happened to those perfectly worn, $100 jeans after sending a load to the neighborhood wash 'n fold, we sympathize.