When I was a kid we had a washer and dryer. In my 20s I used the shared washers and dryers in my apartment building. When I bought my house I had a washer. I had to go to the laundromat a mile away to dry my clothes. But then I discovered that all I had to do was swap out the power cord on the dryer that was stored at my house for it to work. Bingo-bango-bongo, I have a washer and dryer in my house.
So now I’m back in SoCal for work. There’s a laundromat just down the block. At first it wasn’t so bad. But recently it seems packed. People hang onto the carts, so there’s not one available when I need to transfer my two loads of laundry from the washer to the dryer. People sit on the folding tables. I’m not too keen on that. That’s what the benches are for, and I wonder if people are wearing clean clothes to the laundromat. (I do.)
And today a woman was changing her little girl’s shitty diaper on a folding table. She used a towel instead of something nonpermeable. I’m not using that table today! In fact I think I’ll take some hangers down and hope I get a basket so that I can hang my shirts and trousers, and just stuff everything else into my laundry bag and fold it at home.
I’ll drink to that… I hate them too. And then one time, my wife and I were in a hurry so we decided to take the laundry to the drop-off place instead. “Just this one time”, we said. “It’s a little more expensive but we just don’t have time this weekend.”
That was four years ago. Haven’t stepped foot in the laundromat since.
I miss my old neighborhood in Queens, which had the best laundromat ever constructed.
It wasn’t the closest one to my apartment, but I always made the trek there anyway.
Open 24 hours, so I could do my laundry at 3AM like a normal person. Never crowded, and it was huge, with row upon row upon row of beautiful, brand new stainless steel industrial washing machines and driers in various sizes.
Plus there were vending machines for munchies and drinks, change machines, and 24-hour drop-off (if you’re into that sorta thing.)
My new apartment building has its own laundry room, but it’s only open until 11PM. WTF is wrong with these people?
When I got married and moved in with my husband (who was in the US Air Force, stationed in Spain at the time), I left my parents’ washer and dryer at their house. I missed them sorely. My parents too, of course. At any rate, I’d go to the base laundromat, which meant that I traveled about 30 miles each way. Since I had a lot of other things that I needed to do on base as well, the time wasn’t wasted.
When we moved back to the US, in San Antonio, I used to walk a couple of blocks pushing a baby stroller, with a basket of laundry balanced on my head. At least I got in a fair bit of exercise. In Las Vegas, a couple of years later, I’d walk about a block to a laundromat, this time with a toddler in tow.
I was delighted to get a washer and dryer of my own. I don’t want to go to laundromats any more. They always seem to be dirty and overcrowded.
My gripe was the closest one had four (4) TVs, one on each wall, so you couldn’t escape them. And one was always on a noisy sport like a car race. The others were tuned to the No Plot Progress Soap Opera Channel.
Our new apartment is right nextdoor to the laundry room, and our bedroom is directly above it. There is a posted sign saying no laundry after 9pm, but it is frequently ignored. Some nights it sounds like people are drying their tennis balls and sneakers in the driers. My SO usually will go down and open all of the drier doors to stop them, and so far people seem to get the message.
I almost miss my old laundromat. It had free popcorn, a credit-card-style thing instead of coins, wireless internet, an espresso bar, and it was never full.
The only good thing I can say for laundromats – if you get there in an uncrowded hour – is that you can do all your laundry at once instead of taking all day at home to do little loads. Otherwise, the foregoing remarks about cleanliness and rude fellow launderers go for me, too. Where I used to go before I had access to a washer and dryer at home the TV was always blaring something like Jerry Springer, and there would be a huge tattooed woman there who insisted the channel could not be changed. I always took a book and tried to shut out the background noise. That noise level on a busy day was almost as bad as a bowling alley on league night.
Well, a place that’s main claim is that it’s a step up from beating your clothes on a rock by a river can’t have all that much going for it.
I don’t miss the poopy diaper washers, or the clothes horses/washer hogs who wander off and leave half a dozen machines sitting with completed loads, but I do miss the observed craziness - such as the Washington State National Guardsman trying to impress a woman by telling of his adventures at the recent WTO riots in Seattle: “I call it my dummybegood stick. I get it up between their legs and yell ‘Dummy be good! Dummy be good!’”
Since 1980, the only times I’ve had to use laundromats were when we lived aboard our boat. First was right after our daughter was born, so I’d have her in her car seat on the folding table while I folded.
Most recently was for 2 months in 2004 before we got this house. The trick was figuring out which dryers were working - the attendant was pretty good at directing you away from the dead ones. Still, there were always fewer dryers than washers.
One day, there was a woman who would toss 3 or 4 dryer sheets in each load. As she pulled her dry clothes out, the sheets would flutter to the floor, where they stayed. Them suckers are slippery! I was soooooo glad when we got the keys to this house.
Up till last year, my town had a great laundromat, run by a crazy old Russian couple. They were great fun to talk to, and their cat sat on my lap while I did my laundry. Then they retired, and I go to a great big place that has two TVs and a radio going full-blast, and dozens of shrieking children.
Awww. I’m feeling nostalgic. I’d go and set my washing going (two machines, no queues), get the Sunday paper from the shop next door, and grab a Chinese takeaway for my lunch on the way home across the road.
Now I have my own washing machine, I do none of the above. I’m spiritually poorer as a result, I’m sure.
Ah, yes. I remember the last time I was forced into a laundromat. My daughter was about 5 days old and grubby people kept coming up and waving their fingers in her face.
It was very soon after that we decided we simply must have our own washer and dryer; little miss mini-Marli turned out to be a champion spitter-upper, and there was no way in hell I was going to the laundromat every day.
Laundromats are bad; L.A. laundromats are worse. The one nearest to me was next to a convenience store (cheap beer!), and so often had some drunken dude taking a leak out front on the sidewalk. Inside there always seemed to be some young mother smacking the shit out of her crying children.
It got so I would drive an extra twenty minutes just to do laundry at a less-crowded laundromat. Then I found Lucy’s, which is a chain of laundromats around L.A. Large, clean, modern, and not always crowded, it was easily the best laundromat around.
Nowadays, back on the least coast, I’m glad I live in a building with a washer and dryer on each floor. Fuck laundromats.
Don’t like laundromats? Try living in a country where they don’t have laundromats (the word “laundrette” was mentioned in an English text and I had to explain the concept to my colleague), then see how you feel.
I’ve had my own machine for a long time now, but there is something about the people-watching in a laundromat. You see people at their most basic. Doing chores. I dunno, as long as you have enough time, it can be a fun experience.
I absolutely LOVE having my own washer and dryer. It seems like such a huge chunk out of my life to sit around in a laundromat waiting and waiting. Even though I’d have a book, I’d still end up bored out of my mind. Now, I can put the laundry in the washer and get stuff done around the house (or not. My choice) while it chugs away. Awesome!
When I didn’t have a washer and dryer in my apartment, and had to use the communal laundry room, I would put off doing laundry even more than I do now (which is saying something). Once, I threw out my back hauling laundry to the laundry room. After that, an in-unit washer and dryer was an absolute requirement for any apartment that I’d be willing to live in…
Ah the joys of one’s own laundry room. I can put a load in the washer and/or dryer then spend my time [del]surfin’ the dope[/del] attending to other important home tasks.
I will say this for laundromats. I gained some personal wisdom from a laundromat lady once. I was doing my laundry one evening and she and I were the only ones there. She and I were talking about our days (we’d both had particularly bad ones) and she imparted these words of wisdom to me:
I hate laundromats. The only thing that I like about them is that I can get a large amount of laundry done at once. Also, my parents’ washing machine isn’t big enough for my comforter, so I have to, at least, wash that at the laundromat. But other than that I usually give my parents a few bucks towards electricity and bring my laundry to their house; at least there I don’t have to worry about someone stealing my undies.
