I am a fan of ground floor laundry rooms. I don’t mind carrying an occasional basket of clothes up or down the stairs, but I would be very unhappy if my husband was taking his dirty gardening (more like heavy landscaping, lol) clothes upstairs! He leaves them in our laundry room just off the entry. I’m sure those with spouses deep into dirt digging appreciate having a ground floor laundry room. 
Plus, if the time comes for us to make fewer trips upstairs, we might convert the office on the first floor into our bedroom, so the laundry room will be on the same floor.
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Wanted to add, I still have a slop sink in the basement which gets a lot of use.
Also I have both a device that turns off the water to the washer if the floor is getting wet (Floodmaster or Floodstop are two different brands) and I have a floor drain in the laundry room.
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Your brother in law’s house sounds similar to mine- older, one level home. So to save space, it’s in the garage. I do miss my laundry room/mud room that was entry from the garage.
2nd floor washer machines are supposed to sit inside a plastic tub, in order to avoid this issue. I can’t remember (because my washer machine was sitting on top of it!), but I think the tub had a drain in the middle of it.
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@CMCMLM the one story home was actually DH’s childhood home, the one where MIL converted a bedroom after adding a second story.
The house with the W/D in the garage was BIL’s house down in Tustin/Orange County. It was a brand new 2-story house when he bought it about 15 years ago. He sold that house and they now live in Redondo in a bungalow. Their W/D are in an SDU behind their bungalow. It’s a beautiful space for a laundry room but too far from their primary dwelling from a convenience standpoint (actually maybe not that much farther than mine when I count having to go up/down two flights of stairs but seems far since he has to walk out the backdoor and across his deck to get to the SDU).
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My kids like to reminisce about how they used to play a game of tossing their stuffed animals down the chute .
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Glad to hear I’m not the only one that throws dirty laundry down the stairs! My method is to collect it in a large kitchen garbage bag and then throw it down the steps from the second floor to the first (where the small laundry room is) when I am ready to start a load. I fold the clean clothes in the laundry room and then put it on the downstairs banister to carry the folded laundry upstairs next time I go upstairs ( I usually do it in two trips if it is a full load of laundry). I do my own laundry, my husband wants to do his, so he has his own system.
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Our washer has overflowed numerous times (often someone forgot to check that the sink it drains into is clear without a plastic bag or article of clothing obstructing it), so we are very glad it’s in our kitchen which has sheet vinyl flooring instead of hardwood flooring that we have in the rest of the house.
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Main floor laundry. As others have said, easy to throw in laundry during the day and we spend more time on the main floor. Carrying down is no issue as we have a laundry chute that drops into a hamper in the mud room right next to the washer. Clothes get folded and everyone is asked to carry up a load anytime they head upstairs which minimizes the running up and down. Slop sink also in the mud/laundry room. Gets used ALL the time and my husband and I have commented many times how that was one of the best decisions we made when building the house. Wouldn’t change a thing.
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My dad added a “laundry chute” to their Seattle house soon after they bought it. He cut the bottom out of one section of the hall bath cabinet and the ceiling of the laundry room directly below. Serendipitously, this missed floor joists and was directly over the washer, where a basket caught the free-falling laundry. He did trim it out nicely and paint to match the ceiling 
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When the grandkids came along they had to add a child-proof latch to the cabinet, but any number of dolls and toys landed in the basket when they were able to open the latch.
ETA - I’m sure it wasn’t a good idea from a fire standpoint, considering that dryers are high on the list of places fires start.
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Rather than 1st vs 2nd floor, the important factor for me is having the least distance when traveling to/from laundry room. For me, this is 2nd floor.
- If I am moving close to/from closet, distance is shortest on 2nd floor.
- If I am changing and putting clothes in or taking clothes out of washer/dryer/basket (I live alone), distance is shortest on 2nd floor.
- I store detergent in laundry room, so detergent and similar cleaning items does not influence distance.
- I rarely use an iron, but have one on 2nd floor between laundry room and closet. I expect I could also put one on 1st floor if needed, so iron does not influence distance.
- My dryer is in laundry room, and I don’t use drying rack, so does not influence distance.
The only downside I’ve noted is I had a washer load spill that caused $30-$40k worth of damage (significant net profit due to insurance paying $10k sticker price for projector in downstairs room below laundry that was worth <$1k). Had the laundry been on the 1st floor, I’d expect damage would be far smaller. Had the drainage hole in floor below washer been properly aligned with the drainage pipe, the damage would also have been far smaller.
My next door neighbor has their washer/dryer in the garage. I see them use it sometimes when their garage door is open. This would be one of the worst possible locations under my system.
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I stayed in a small casita in Albuquerque recently for a few months. It had a big closet with a stacked washer dryer off the bedroom also. What made it extra convenient was that the closet was in between the bedroom and the bath. I would disrobe, throw my dirty clothes right into the washer, take a shower, and then get my clean clothes or pajamas from the closet. I didn’t carry clothes anywhere!
If I were ever to design a new house for our family, that would definitely be in the plan!
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I think my daughter has used washer as hamper in some of her apartments. I tried to teach my kids that it is important to separate by color etc, but when they were doing their own laundry (starting in middle school) they taught ME that with today’s fabrics it’ not such a big deal to mix. I still usually sort/separate, but in a small apartment I might opt to do the washer/hamper method.
I once had a coworker who kept horses. On his farm the house had a mud room with old washer/dryer that was just for HIS yucky barn clothes. His wife insisted they not even come in the house.
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My ILs have a laundry chute, or I guess “had” is more accurate. They hired someone in the fall to put spray foam insulation in the basement and never thought to point out the chute’s existence to the workers. 
I sort of do that with my running clothes. I hang them up to dry on hooks in the hall outside the laundry room. But then the next day, the latest set gets hung up and the old ones are tossed into the washer. With only two people, I only need to do one mid-week load and a 2-3 loads on the weekend. And most of them aren’t even full.
When we had 4 people, I would sort into lights and darks because we had enough to make full loads. Nowadays it just all gets thrown in together. I might separate any new t-Shirts that are bright red, orange, purple, etc and put them in a small load by themselves.
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Our first house had 2nd floor laundry. The convenience is great but it was a small house and the noise and vibrations were awful. Our current house has a 1st floor laundry room complete with counters sink cabinets etc. No noise, but more room and less convenient.
What we tried to do but couldn’t (due to the architecture) was to create a 2nd floor laundry chute down to the first floor laundry room.
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You bring up a great point about vibration. We were concerned about that, so instead of buying the “pedestals” for raising washer and dryer to convenient height, we had the builder make a platform and tile it (just like the floor in that room). He built it super sturdy (told us we could “park a car on it”) and we have absolutely no vibration. Can’t be felt or heard on either 2nd floor (where they are) or below from first floor, even when there is an unbalanced blanket load that is strong enough to cause the washer to stop.
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That’s what I do! Dirty clothes go straight into the laundry room, which is between the bathroom and the bedroom.
We designed our house, and this was one feature that was non-negotiable!
And yes, it’s a good idea to build a super sturdy floor and put extra insulation in the walls around the laundry room.
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In my area, having a laundry in the garage would be a negative. Guess there are some benefits to living in CA. Our first house had laundry in the basement. Second in a great spot and now we have it off the kitchen. Has it’s own room. But I’d prefer to have the stackable and a folding table.
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I love having my laundry room on the third floor where we have all our bedrooms. It’s set up so the washer/dryer and a utility sink with a counter are in an alcove and there’s a shutter (electronic) that hides everything. It’s similar to a shutter that covers windows in areas where there are hurricanes–at least that’s what the builder told me.
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