Okay, so you’re ona tight schedule, you trot down to your building’s laundry room, pull your soggy-wet clothes out of a washer, open a dryer…
Zut!
Someone’s dry clothes are in there. The dryer is still warm.
Do you…
a) Pull the clothes out and leave them in a crunched up pile on top of the machine?
b) Pull the clothes out and leave them in a tidy folded pile on top of the machine?
I’m a B person. Knowing that while my clothes are still warm, if I fold them they will be almost wrinkle free and I won’t even have to iron.
My theory is that I’m making up for my implied rudeness (from being impatient) by saving them some time and freeing them from the drudgery of ironing out the wrinkles I would otherwise create.
Sniffs_Markers on the other hand, does not like the idea of anyone else fiddling with her delicates*, and feels it is more polite to leave them to the owner to avoid embarassing them. She is an A person.
*Note: I leave the delicates in a heap, and just fold the wrinkle-prone items like shirts and pants (if I’m feeling generous I may pair socks). However, it does require some handling of delicates while sifting through to get at the wrinkle-victims.
So Dopers, which is more irksome? Finding your clothes in a wrinkled heap sentencing you to the fate of ironing, or wondering if some perv was playing with your undies?
I’ve always dumped them on a table. Seriously, this really pisses me off. I give them about 5 minutes and if they’re not down there to move their stuff, I’ll move it for them. One time I got sick of waiting so I started grabbing all the clothes out of this one dryer. Well half way through it I realized it was a womens load with pantys, bras and the such. I started to freak out so I hurried up and pulled hers out and put mine in and booked out of there. Well, just as I was running out I ran past a lady that was walking in. Turns out it was my neighbor from across the hall, talk about embarassing.
I hated being in that situation. If the clothes were still warm, I’d most likely fold them as well, feeling strange all the while. Like you, I’d be hoping to make up for my removing the clothes in the first place. I guess it’s the lesser of two violations. Moving someone else’s things, not great. Wrinkling them in the process, worse. If the clothes were cool, I wouldn’t bother folding them, and would feel less guilty for moving them.
True, cool clothes suggests a more willful neglect. When they’re warm, it implies the person is just slow to get back down to the laundry room.
I often clean house while doing laundry and prefer to finish a load of dishes rather than to trot all the way downstairs and then come back up to tepid water. So on occasion, I can be late getting to my laundry.
I generally leave them in a pile, mainly because often I am too lazy to fold my own laundry, let alone someone elses. I’ve had mine moved before too, and they weren’t folded.
Also, the dryers here SUCK, so generally the clothes are still damp, particularly if it’s a big load. (Yeah, I know that in that case I should probably fold them, but if they’re not there soon enough, they’d be wrinkled anyways.)
I live in a dorm (still), and it seems like everyone here takes approach A, especially on busy laundry days like the weekend. I avoid this by doing my laundry in the morning during the week. In the laundry room on the floor we have four dryers and two washers, and a third washer that costs 2x what the others cost. It doesn’t seem to have any purpose other than to be more expensive than the others, and never get used.
A couple of years ago I was doing laundry, and had to wait on a dryer to become available, after one finished I went back to my room to wait for about 20 minutes to give the person time to get their clothes. I came back and they still hadn’t come, so I took them out. As I was taking them out and placing them on a table the guy came in to get his stuff. He’s an Indian, and he started scolding me for messing with his clothes, telling me how I shouldn’t have touched his clothes, because he wasn’t gone that long, etc. I couldn’t believe he would pitch such a fit. I still see him in the dorm and I wish that prick a life full of wrinkly clothes.
I’d never fold 'em. When I lived in the dorm, I felt weird on the rare occasions someone else would fold my clothes. I don’t mind if you stick 'em in a pile, but please don’t fold them for me. I don’t expect or want you to do that.
I just pull them out. I’d be kind of freaked out if someone other than the boyfriend or Mrs. Mercotan folded my clothes for me. I do, however, try to go make educated decisions about which clothes to pull - I’ll pull out a load of sheets and towels before clothes, a load of shirts before delicates, and a load of delicates only as a last resort. Other people tossing your laundry around is the price you pay for using a laundry room where you don’t feel you have to babysit the clothes for the entire wash/dry cycle.
Ah, see this really addresses my OP. See, I was asking not “which do you do?” but rather, if you were the one whose lothes were removed from the dryer, "which would bug you more if you were the removee?"
Strangers fooling with your stuff (though trying to be considerate) giving you the wonder-if-it-was-a-perv heebie jeebies? Or just inconsiderately leaving them in a heap so you have to iron?
Eats_Crayons, I think you’re making a grave mistake in assuming that the average college student even OWNS an iron, much less that said average student could be induced to use it.
I know there are SOME people who care deeply about wrinkles in their everyday, going-to-class clothes, but I don’t think they’re in the majority.
C. Take the wet clothes out of the dryer and dump them onto a washing machine that has a contact paper sign written on with a sharpie. (it was the “erasable” sign-in sheet for laundry)
Boy, there were a lot of pissed people in my dorm when the marker ruined their clothes the weekend people did that… of course, taking the wet clothes out of the dryer was a bold move anyway.
Actually, I said nothing about college students at all.
I’m talking about ANY communal laundry facilities, such as those in my apartment building. I was done university almost ten years ago. These problems persist well into adulthood unless you own a house or have in suite facilities.
D. I would leave my clothes in the washer until the other person came and got them out of the dryer.
I furiously loathe it when someone even touches my clothes, and I find it absolutely sickening to touch someone else’s clothes. I have left my clothes in the washer once for about 45 minutes waiting for a dryer to open up, and if I’m ten or fifteen minutes late (although I am getting better at that over the years) and someone takes my clothes out and I see them, I’ve been known to ask them indignantly what they’re doing. I don’t care what kind of pile they’re left in, it’s disgusting to touch someone else’s clothes.
If the dryer is stopped and I want it, the person whose clothes are in there has 5 minutes to get them the hell out or I will, although I will make some effort to at fold and stack them neatly if they are still warm. If they are cold when I get there, they are just going into a pile as I drag them out. If having your clothes touched by someone else creeps you out, then make sure you get there for when the cycle is finished, rather than leaving them in the damned dryer when other people want to use it.
I would move them either onto a table or onto the dryer, but no way would I fold somebody else’s clothes. I’d be weirded out if somebody else folded mine – heck, my grandma once folded my underwear for me when I was visiting and that was just too much, and I KNOW her! – but I wouldn’t mind if they moved it. Besides, people fold things differently. I’d probably have to refold mine anyway if somebody else folded it.
As for ironing, I don’t even own one. Haven’t needed it.
I gotta move in the same building as Eats_Crayons. You’d be folding my laundry every week.
I would be lucky if someone didn’t stealy my clothes if I wasn’t around to take them out.
Oh and now I feel is the appropriate time for me to reveal my invention of the week.
If I owned a laundry mat I would have a web cam set up so my customers could check out how busy the place was before the hauled 50 pounds of laundry down.
I also try very hard not to abandon my laundry when I’m using a communal laundry room because I’ve heard way too many stories about stuff being stolen. So if I did leave it, it wouldn’t be for long. But if you needed the dryer, go ahead and move it.
Besides, why fold somebody else’s clothes? I’ve known people who would probably deliberately leave their clothes behind for somebody else to fold if they knew somebody would. That’s rewarding them for hogging the dryer, isn’t it???
I fold them, mostly because the first time I left my laundry and was kicked out, the kicker folded mine. I decided to return the favor as a random act of kindness.
Yes, I’ve had to deal with some women’s undies. No, I didn’t do anything rude, or snag a trophy…
