My experiences with a laundromat when I was 18 in my first apartment convinced me to always find places that had their own clothes washing facilities. Still, there was a brief period in Japan when I was staying with a friend who did her laundry at a laundromat, and so I had to do the same. I loathed it. Aside from the fact that the instructions were in Japanese only, it was incredibly expensive. It would cost me the equivalent of $10 to wash and dry a few loads. The “weekly mansion” (furnished apartment) I stay at now has a washing machine, but I’m relegated to hanging my washing in the main room to dry it, as if Tokyo wasn’t humid enough.
When I was in Spain, and couldn’t get to the base laundromat for whatever reason, I washed my clothes in the bathtub. This meant filling the tub halfway with cold water, while boiling water on the stove (we had a flash hot water heater, which was only good for taking skimpy showers), adding a bit of detergent, adding the clothes, and agitating the whole mess with a broom handle. Agitate, agitate, agitate. Drain the tub, rinse with cold water (I’m not boiling more water for the rinse) twice. Then wring out the clothes as much as possible and drape them around the apartment. Start next load. It was backbreaking work, and I didn’t even have to haul the water.
There may very well have been civilian laundromats in Spain, but I didn’t know of any.
The laundromat we go to is decent enough. The folks running it are nice and they keep the place clean. But sometimes it’s busier than we would like and/or people insist on hogging the carts and/or they close the lids on washing machines they’ve emptied so that you think they’re still in use. What is up with closing the lids like that anyway? Arrgh!
However, it’s better than our laundry here at our apartment building. It’s in the basement (which tends to reek of mildew), is accessible only by outside stairs that look like they lead to a dungeon and get wet when it rains and…there’s only one washer and dryer for the whole place. Also, the washer is taller than average so a short person like me can’t reach to the bottom of the drum to get the socks and underwear that settle there without the aid of something to snag them with.
I miss where I lived before for many reasons, chief among them was the laundry room. There were two washers and dryers and what was really great, in my opinion, is that I could open my front door and hear if someone was using them. Saved lugging the laundry there only to find I’d have to wait. The manager and tenants kept it clean and, as a bonus, I didn’t have to dress for foul weather to get to it, either.
The guy who runs the laundromat is always pushing his dust mop around. And I frequently see him wiping down the machines and, occasionally, the folding tables. But he either didn’t see or didn’t care about the woman changing the shitty diaper.
Since October, I’ve been doing the laundromat thing for the first time since… God, I don’t remember when. The only thing that’s not perfect about our new suite is the lack of laundry appliances.
But there’s a laundromat just down the road! No worries! Eeeeeesh.
The lady who runs the place is insane, I think. Either that or she’s a brilliant performance artist doing an always-on impression of the most backwards ignorant stereotype of a Chinese washerwoman imaginable, only hopped up on benzedrine.
When you’re just about finished loading a machine, she charges at you yelling “I coming, I coming!” and then paws at your laundry, indicates where the quarters go, where the detergent goes, what button to press for hot water, etc. It’s no use explaining that you’re familiar with commercial laundry machines and quite able to manage on your own, and she seems oblivious to even the most direct assertion that you’d prefer it if she didn’t touch your underwear.
Several times, she’s announced “I go behind!” and then scrambled up on top of a row of washers, along the tops over four or five of them, and then crawled down behind the row to do something obscure, presumably with the plumbing. Did I mention she’s less than five feet tall and leans forward about forty-five degrees at all times?
Lately I’ve been going over to another place some distance away. The machines are older and crappier, but the old dude who runs it just sits quietly in the back, folding laundry, listening to the CBC, and not doing anything at all to make me anxious or uncomfortable. And he’s laconic to the point of communicating almost exclusively with gesture. That’s kind of cool, compared with the shrill high-volume tones of Speed Laundress.