I’ve lived in this apartment complex for 7 months. I’ve had an empty laundry basket stolen from the community laundry room twice since I’ve been here.
Both times, I was away from the laundry room for a few hours. One time was a Sunday afternoon when I got involved watching a game and came back to the laundry room after 3 hours. The second time was a Sunday where I fell asleep watching tv and went back to the laundry room after about 4 hours.
OK, maybe I understand ‘borrowing’ the laundry basket if you brought a shitload of laundry in garbage bags and needed something more convenient to carry it back to your apartment. But why not return it soon and not have the bad karma?
They sell laundry baskets at the grocery store across the street for $3.
[QUOTE=Seinfeld]
George: I don’t understand why people buy umbrellas. They have baskets full of them for free in restaurants.
Jerry: Those are other people’s umbrellas George.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe it’s the Georage Constanzas of the world thinking “hey, free laundry basket”.
This. Estimates vary as to the exact percentage but I’ve seen figures ranging from 10% to 20%, which feels about right to me. That’s right somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 5 of all the people you come across are assholes plain and simple.
Nope, that wouldn’t be it. The complex that I’m in has a lot of apartments in my section under renovation and vacant. There is never a wait for a machine.
Personally, I bring the laundry basket back to my apartment after I load the washer. I hand carry the clothes to the dryer, and then bring the basket back at the end of the dryer cycle.
Last year, I washed out the cat box with a garden hose, then left it to dry on the back lawn while I washed my hands. When I went to go get it, it had vanished. Somewhere out there is a poor bastard whose life is so wretched they had steal a used cat box. Maybe things are looking up and they are upgrading to laundry baskets.
Dumbass, if you are going to leave anything that has a least a 4 cent value in a public place for more than 3 seconds, you need to put a sign on it… “FREE”.
Nobody will touch it, except an honest person, who actually believes it is ‘free’, the thieves won’t steal it because they won’t think they are stealing anything.
Opposite, if you have some piece of garbage to get rid of, put it by the curb and put “free” on it, it will sit there forever. Put a price tag on it and leave it overnight, it’ll be gone the next morning.
“I’m sorry for your loss”… at least they didn’t steal your beer… or your underwear.
You know those cardboard boxes by every copy machine that 10 reams of copy paper come in?
Hie thee to your friendly neighborhood copy shoppe and get a few empty boxes like that. That’s what I use for my laundry basket. How fancy-schmancy do you need to be? I’ve never had one stolen yet. (Well… There was that one time I went out to an actual laundromat, and when I had my back turned, the attendant threw it away.)
Okay, maybe I’ve never had one stolen because, like Dewey Finn above, I don’t actually leave my precious cardboard box in the laundry room. Someday soon, I may have to live in that box. ETA: Anyway, they’re free and there are always plenty more where that one came from, and you can always keep several spares around.
Maybe you could use the “Disney” trick to keep people from making off with your stuff.
The Disney method is used by those with young children to keep their strollers from disappearing while on a ride at the park. (Parks often provide rental strollers that are much larger than what would normally fit on a plane. They tend to wander off while parents and toddlers are in a show or ride).
Tools needed:
Clean disposable diaper
Ziploc bag
Soda pop (dark-colored, Coke, Pepsi, etc.)
Place diaper in ziploc bag.
Pour in some of the Coke.
Seal bag.
Drink remaining soda pop.
Now leave the sodden, brown disgusting diaper on/in the object you want left alone. Works every time.
That would be $3 well spent to a normal honest person who needed a laundry basket. To the self-centered thieving scum who have taken yours, that’s not even on their radar. “I can steal this” is about as far as their thinking goes.
1 If this thread goes on long enough, someone will come in to defend stealing laundry baskets; and
2. It was probably the same household that stole both baskets, in my neighborhood, I’ve recently noticed that most of the bullshit comes from one house. Most of the litter, most of the vandalism, most of the times people are being too loud late at night, most of the bullshit all comes from the same set of assholes. It really only takes a small percentage of a population to make life a little crappier for al of us.
Note that if my laundry basket was stolen from the laundry room, I’d wonder how safe my clothes were, and I might have to start waiting there for the wash and dry cycles to complete. (Fortunately, it’s not that bad in my building so I can go back to my apartment, although I try to be back just as the cycles are ending.)
It sucks, but people suck. I don’t even trust people not to steal my clothes, much less the basket. When I lived in places with communal laundry, I always stayed in the laundry room with my stuff. Bring a book or your preferred entertainment device (Kindle, cell phone, etch-a-sketch, etc).
Also, leaving laundry sitting in a machine for more than a couple minutes can induce irrational rage in passers-by. It’s a poorly-understood but well-documented phenomenon.