How I Used AI to Fix a Laundry Room Problem

If you’ve ever dealt with a shared laundry room, you know the annoyance when the sign-up list (Waschplan) isn’t there. That’s what happened to me recently. I went downstairs to reserve a slot, but the list for the upcoming week was missing again—the Hauswart hadn't put it up yet. I saw the current week’s list, which was empty, but I needed to sign up for the following week. I knew we'd be stuck without a schedule until the Hauswart returned, which could take days.

So, I decided to get creative. I took a photo of this week's empty list and asked ChatGPT, with its new vision capabilities, to recreate it using PHP code.

The original photo sent to GPT4o

Prompt:

Recreate this layout of page in PDF in PHP on A4 page.

If you ask me if the result was perfect — the simple answer is: No — the general layout was there, but the columns and sizing were off. However, it gave me a solid starting point.

I spent a few minutes adjusting the script, refining the layout, and then asked ChatGPT to generate the dates for six days, starting from the previous Monday or the next one if the PDF wasn’t created on a Monday. Within about 40 minutes, I had a working prototype—a quick, practical solution I hadn’t even considered before.

Whenever the Hauswart forgets the list (Waschplan für ein Mehrfamilienhaus (PDF)), I have a tool to generate a PDF instantly and keep everyone on schedule.

Problem solved!

You can also check my other projects and coding experiments.

Waschplan für die Waschküche, Waschplan für ein Mehrfamilienhaus, Der Waschplan pdf, Waschplan Vorlage zum Ausdrucken