This has puzzled me and I need to know the answer. (Not a can’t-sleep-at-night-for-worrying-about-it but a niggling brain worm that surfaces occasionally). It’s basically this: watching US sitcoms and some US movies, there’s always a great to do when the laundry needs to be done. There are remarks about ‘haven’t done the laundry for 3 weeks’ or ‘I can’t come away for the weekend, I have to do my laundry’ etc. It’s bizarre. Is there a ritual or something that goes with it? Do you really wait 3 weeks to do it (I’d run out of knickers!)? And why does it take an entire day? I can’t imagine actually ‘scheduling’ to do the laundry.
I’d say it is the stereotype of the single male who will wear every piece of clothing he owns until there is nothing clean. Now, having used communal laundries and laundramats, I can understand why people might put off doing laundry. It is common to find washers and driers included in newer apartments, but they would still be rare in urban apartments which are often featured in sitcoms and movies.
I don’t think Americans are any odder about laundry than anyone else. No, it’s not a ritual or something that needs to be scheduled. It’s more like, “Shit, I wanted to wear those jeans, but they’ve got mud on them from when it rained on Wednesday. Better do laundry.”
I have a friend (named Juniper200) who doesn’t do laundry for weeks on end. I have no idea what she’s wearing all that time. I do my laundry once a week.
I cannot think of a single example I have ever seen in a U.S. television program or movie. I don’t think it’s that common.
My experience has been that Americans do their laundry when they have clothes that need washed.
Seems a reasonable approach to me.
I can’t think of any either, but yesterday I was thinking of a couple of sitcom oddities. Why doesn’t anyone ever say “Goodbye” after finishing a phonecall? (This goes for dramas and films, too). How does the person on the other end know the conversation is over?
Why do women in the 60s and 70s only wash their hair once a week? It’s usually on a Saturday when they don’t want to go out with someone and that’s their excuse. I would imagine if a woman said that to a man they didn’t want to date in 2008, the man would hear that, look at the phone in disgust and/or confusion and hang up.
It’s code for sex.
“I haven’t done the laundry in 3 weeks” = “Haven’t had any for 3 weeks”
“I can’t come away for the weekend…” = “I want to get laid and if I come away I can’t”
“It’s a small load, I’ll do it by hand” = you get the picture.
Not really, but it kind of fits, doesn’t it?
The stereotype (if there is one) is not correct. In our household of 2 adults and 2 small girls, we do laundry most days. It is a problem if you are 22 years old, smoke pot most of the time, live in a huge city, and have to haul your 3 weeks of laundry down the street long enough to interrupt your pot smoking.
Americans tend to be pretty fanatical about clothing cleanliness. Many adults will not wear any item of clothing more than once without washing or dry cleaning and some people tend to wear multiple sets of clothes a day (work/after work/lounging).
Actually, for some of us there is a ritual.
First, I put on my outergarment (or “Tyvek Up”, as we say), get a new filter for my mask, and put that on (hood optional). I then push the wheelbarrow over to the lakefront altar, where I make an offering to the gods, and take a piece of the sacred fire to the pit. There, I begin to boil the water in the cauldron, and once it’s good and piping, I throw in my uniforms, underwear, socks, and other funkinastifiedstankystuff in, and stir it with a canoe paddle. This is just the pre-wash. I later push the wheelbarrow over to Jobu, and again, pray to him for a fresh mountain scent, and carry on with more of the cleansing.
Tripler
. . . and if I don’t get my whites whiter, I say ‘F*ck you, Jobu!’.
Ye gods! Sitcoms and movies are fantasies. They do not reflect reality. Laundry is not a big deal, and hardly anybody cancels weekend plans because they have to do laundry (seriously, that’s a brushoff, isn’t it obvious?).
At least I think so. I don’t actually watch television and don’t recall seeing much of this in the movies I watch.
This seems like me judging people in the UK based on what I saw on Monty Python years ago. Eh, those Brits!
I am trying to come up with the plot problem that would be solved by using the laundry excuse. Not finding one.
See now, this isn’t so far off. Before portable hair dryers, women didn’t wash their hair as often as they do now. True, it was sometimes used as an excuse. If she really wanted to go out on Saturday night, she’d wash her hair Saturday morning.
It’s probably more a 40’s and 50’s thing though – we had hair dryers in the 60’s and 70’s.
Are they shows perhaps set in New York City or other cities? Here in NYC, it’s common not to have laundry in your apartment, many people need to go to a laundromat to wash their clothes, and you do need to schedule time to do that because you have to stay with it. I think it’s a little bit of a TV/movies “thing” – some of it is reality, but some of it is a little fictional too. I’ve noticed in movies that people are often meeting attractive dates at the laundromat, but I don’t believe that happens so much in real life.
Retitle the thread “What’s with Americans and their lazy sitcom writers?”
Applause
It saves time. Every second of screen time is valuable. Goodbyes aren’t necessary. This is especially true of sitcoms, which get exactly 22 minutes to tell a story.
(And in movies, it’s not necessarily the case people don’t say goodbye.)
You never see anyone on Star Trek go to take a dump, either, unless Wesley has to save the Enterprise by transmitting tachyons through the plumbing. Logically, one assumes the crew of a big freakin’ battleship would produce a fairly substantial amount of dung, and it’s gotto go somewhere, but it’s not relevant to the plot so you don’t see it.
Where do you think they get the base materials for the replicators? You can’t just create matter, it needs to be transformed. This is known as a “closed cycle”.
:eek:
You DO hear about the Captain’s log a lot though.
Babylon 5 had at least one scene in a men’s room. What happens to what is produced there is a mystery, but there was proof that people still pee in the future.
I hate doing laundry. I put it off for weeks. There are times I have bought new underwear rather than wash my clothes. (ah, college…)
Now it gets done within a reasonable timeframe (once every two weeks) because my husband does it for me, as long as I scrub the tub or something while he’s at it. Gladly.
See, if you own enough underwear to go three weeks without doing laundry and not repeat underwear, you only have to do laundry every three weeks. It’s not like laundry is a big ordeal, but if it’s an avoidable one, why not avoid it? It’s like trying to make one big shopping trip a week rather than run by the store every time you go out.
Yeah, it’s totally a 22-year-old male thing.