Can I offer you some stress? Try doing laundry when everyone and their fifth cousin are finding their way into the various basements of their respective dorms. I have to say that if you time it right, so that it's down to a science, you can find all the free washers and dryers you could possibly fill with a week's or a month's worth of clothes. But if you have better things to do with your time, like most of us, you'll just settle for waiting for a machine.
Shattered preconceptions. How ridiculous to think people only do their wash on weekends. I had purposely waited until Monday night to haul out the Wisk and Bounce -- apparently, so had a majority of the students in my cluster. I have to wonder, is this a campus-wide thing, or am I just in a dorm where there is a synchronous laundry cycle? It's said that if you live long enough with the same people, your internal clocks and cycles will coincide. Is this another bizarre repercussion of this phenomena?
And what's with all that time you are deluded into thinking you have. When the machine displays those blue numbers, like 26 or 56 minutes, my time-management decides to kick in. The voice of reason speaks, "invest this time in getting some reading done or your chem. problems or at the very least, relax." Does this happen? Are you kidding me? To think I was once so naive as to believe I could accomplish producing clean clothes and get my work done. Of course, there are super-efficient people who manage to do both and bake that cake, but I can't say that I'm one of those blessed few.
And so much for organization. I like to think that I'm fairly well put together, but I figure I pound those stairs more when doing laundry than anytime during the week combined. It's amazing how many times I can forget the detergent, the fabric softener, quarters or my card. Or if the fates are being particularly cruel, I'll manage to forget all of the above in one day. Not possible? Those stairs will attest to that.
My last adventure in my favorite weekly task, not only shot an entire night's worth of work, but introduced me to people who I hope are the rudest people in my cluster, who will remain anonymous. Yes, cluster. I wandered from basement to basement with my last load of sweaters. Fortunately, the bulk of it was finished before the rush. All I asked for was a scanty 10 minutes of hot air, but instead I got to explore the rambling length of the dorm, parts of which I had never bothered to look into. Educational, sure, but not something that would ever make it on my list of priorities. Funny how life manages to make time for the little things.
Ten minutes. I actually found a machine in the second dorm. Put my clothes in with a dryer sheet. I even came prepared with quarters. Amazing. Of course, it didn't last. Perhaps I was so excited about getting a dryer that I wasn't thinking, or maybe I was just too preoccupied about getting back to my work -- well, in any case, I put those quarters into the wrong machine.
Infuriating? It doesn't take much, but yes. I ran up and down six flights of stairs to get my card and change this time, when the quintessential laundry experience happened to me.
Someone took out my wet clothes (without the dryer sheet -- if I'm going to be petty, I may as well do it thoroughly) and proceeded to use my machine. Sorry if that sounds neurotic, but I just couldn't deal at that point. Not wanting to storm through my dorm again, I claimed my dryer sheet rather petulantly, I suppose, judging from the looks on the faces of the people in the room and left to try the next dorm, praying people there were different. Thankfully, they were. My faith in humanity (and more than a bit of my sanity) restored, I feel ready to tackle that next load of laundry, so long as it's not in the near future ...
