efore moving in with Malaya I hadn't been inside of a Laundromat more than once a year in my entire life. The apartments I'd lived in since I moved away from home for college had washing rooms, but I never used those since they were full of my dirty neighbors. Plus they cost money. Since my dad's house had a washer/dryer, and since my dad was usually happy to see me, and since I didn't get my clothing dirty all that quickly, it wasn't much of a sacrifice to take a full basket over there once every week or two and wash and dry my stuff while eating dinner with him, or watching a Lakers' game, or whatever.

Since I moved up north to live with Malaya, that has all changed. Her parents live much too far away for regular laundry trips to be worth the trouble, and with two of us going to the gym all the time and her wearing dress clothing for work, we get too much clothing dirty to wash it in just one machine, unless we were doing a load or two every other day.

The solution, obviously enough, is to use a public laundromat, where we can use multiple washers/dryers at once, and get everything done in just a couple of hours. The other benefit/punishment about washing clothing somewhere other than home is the invariably-weird people you meet in the process.

This page collects laundromat stories, which are always more about the weird people than about remembering to add dryer sheets. More recent additions are on top of the page.

August 2, 2004

we've gotten the laundry down to a science by now; Malaya pre-sorts stuff for faster washing machine loading, so we carry in our two baskets, she starts loading while I get quarters or put in the soap (which we bring from home in a squirt bottle), and we start our 3 or 4 or 5 machines (depending on how long it's been and how much is dirty). She sets the timer on her watch, and we're off. The machines take like 24 minutes to run, so we head down to TJ Maxx, or Tuesday Morning, or Blockbuster, or drive to the library or drive to get a Jamba Juice, or whatever. Timing it so that we return just as the clothes are done washing.

We then wheel them over to the dryers, Malaya loads them by type (Flux is not allowed to assist in loading for the wet or dry machines, since his male genes would inevitably result in improper clothing type mixing, darks with lights, panties with jeans, or other disastrous combinations), we set the machines for 35 minutes (which is about as long as they take to dry) and we're off again to run more errands or do more shopping/browsing.

And as you've probably guessed, we return just in time for the drying cycle to end. We then pile the clothing into the wheeled baskets, roll them over to a folding table, and go to it, grabbing out our own clothing and folding them up in whatever fashion we wish, so they'll fit into the baskets and not be too horribly wrinkled. From there we drive back home, put the baskets on the bed, and quickly transfer all the folded clothes to hangars, and from there into the closet.

It's not the most rewarding way to spend 2 hours, but there's certainly less total time spent than we would if we had just one washer/dryer at home and had to go back in there every 30 minutes all day, and running other errands while the clothes are washing/drying certainly beats sitting in the laundromat watching them go round and round and reading last week's paper.

January 8, 2004

Tuesday was a productive day, at least in uninspirational terms.  Malaya and I did our usual 2-3 weeks worth of laundry at once, this time occupying 6 washers and 4 dryers. After six months we've got the whole operation down a science, always going in the afternoon when there won't be much of a crowd, having our quarters ready, pre-sorting in the laundry baskets for faster loading there, sharing the folding after they come out dry, etc.  We're actually in the laundromat for about 1/10th of the total time, just long enough to put everything into the washers and then into the dryers and then to fold them.  While everything is washing (27 minutes) and then drying (35 minutes) we go down the strip mall to browse at TJ Maxx or Tuesday Morning or Blockbuster or other places, and return just in time to change things over or fold them up and go home.

Lest you get the idea that this is all an equal division of labor, it's not.  Malaya does most of it, by her insistence.  She's got her own female style of sorting, both for the washing (colors and clothing types) and dryer (clothing type) and if I tried to help I'd just end up mis-sorting and throwing in a towel that was two shades too dark to wash with the t shirts, and then not heavy enough cloth to dry with the jeans.  So I just get the quarters and pour in the detergent while she loads the washers, and then I pile the stuff into the wheeled carts to move from the washers to the dryers while she loads them.

I am allowed to fold and pack the baskets after drying, but only since we bring them straight home and sort through everything on the bed and fold up and hang up and otherwise put away all of our own clothing while it's still toasty from the dryer.

October 9, 2003

So Malaya and I were at the Laundromat on Wednesday.  We had a few loads of dirty clothing, and on top of that we decided to wash all of the throw rugs in the condo.  We've got 7 or 8 of them, all about 2x4 feet, that we put down on top of the beige carpet for a decorative bonus.  Well, to be fair they're Malaya's rugs; since she got them and decorated with them before I was ever here.  But I like them well enough, so I'll take partial credit. The clothing took up four machines and then four driers, and the rugs went into the huge 30 pound load washer, and then took about an hour to dry in two driers.

In September I blogged about weird guy behavior in the Laundromat, so it's been done, but today I must add to the body of evidence.  Since yes, there was another weird guy there, and he was doing things I'd never seen any other weird guys do.

This guy was about 45, moderately overweight, in jeans and a t-shirt.  White, little moustache, slightly scruffy, imminently unremarkable.  He looked like any random guy you'd see trying to find parking for his SUV at a Fuddruckers while his plump wife yelled at their hyperactive 3, 7, and 11 year olds in the back seat. The amusing thing about him was that he was packing his laundry completely in big, black, plastic, garbage bags.  He was already there when Malaya and I arrived, and while we threw our clothing into our four machines and packed the rugs into the heavy duty machine, this guy was in the back corner of the place, using one of the heavy duty machines (which cost $4, double the other machines) and putting his clothing into it.

He would pull a pair of jeans or a shirt out of one garbage bag, shake it out and look it over, then throw it in.  Every now and then he'd see a bad stain and would liberally squirt it with a plastic spray bottle of some sort of stain remover (I assume), before tossing it into the machine with all the other stuff.  We didn't watch him for that long, but it took him longer to get his one machine half loaded than it took Malaya to load up all four of our machines, and she does the whole "sort by type and pigmentation" thing too, so it's not like we're just stuffing clothing into the machines as quickly as possible.

Weirder yet, he was throwing in much clothing that could not have been his.  Shirts and shorts and pants that were far smaller than he was, and Malaya said she saw a few women's items that were also way smaller than he was.  On top of the garbage bags he brought stuff in, he had a whole box of bags, presumably for the carry home.  So hey, at least he used clean bags for the clean clothing. After all, when you're throwing your clothing into a big plastic sack, you want to be sure it's a clean plastic sack.

I can see some slovenly bachelor using trash bags for the clothing; never mind that a laundry basket or two costs about $3 each and holds more than a bag and keeps the stuff in it from fermenting when it's dirty and from wrinkling and squashing when it's clean.  Bachelors aren't exactly known for their intelligence and practicality when it comes to household matters.  But how in the hell does dad end up doing all of the family's landry, and how does his wife let him get away with using trash bags to carry it in?

Malaya and I weren't watching him that closely, mostly since he was of the "don't make eye contact with it" type, but it was hard to miss his sitcom'esque antics.  And then he somehow hurt himself in a "goddamnit that stings!" way, for he began to hop up and down while shaking his hand the way you do when you miss while driving a nail, and issuing muffled curses as he shook it.  I asked Malaya about it, and she saw it, but doesn't have any more idea than I do as to how the guy managed to hurt himself putting laundry into a washing machine.  There wasn't anything hot there, and there weren't any sharp edges that I could see (we used an identical machine for our rugs), so it's a mystery.

He was still carrying on like a bear with a wounded paw when we finished loading everything, started up our machines, and left to do some window shopping while they washed. And when we returned 20 minutes later to put stuff into the driers, he was gone and his machine was running.  I didn't see any blood on the floor, and anyway, if he'd bled on any of his clothing he had that stain remover stuff handy. His trash bags were also gone, and he never returned while we dried our stuff, so he could have driven himself to the hospital, for all I know.

Just looking at his actions, they sort of make sense.  If you didn't care that all of your clothing was getting mixed in together, using just the one heavy duty load machine wouldn't be a bad idea.  It holds up to 30lbs, while the smaller washers take just 8lbs, and the medium ones take up to 20lbs.  The problem is that the bigger ones aren't any larger inside; they just have better springs or stronger drive wheels and such, so you can wash blankets and throw rugs and such in them.  If you actually packed in 25lbs of clothing you would in theory pay $4 for what would cost you $2 a pop in 3 or 4 regular machines.  Of course the downside is that your stuff wouldn't get very clean, with so much of it packed in so tightly.

So the guy was weird and behaving weirdly and managed to injure himself in a relatively child-proofed area.  But hey, at least he didn't try to strike up a conversation with me about which driers worked best or how big the folding tables were or which machines there were the best value for the money.

September 12, 2003

One big change for me, now that I live with Malaya, is that we don't have a washing machine, and that we get a lot of clothing dirty. I haven't had a washing machine for over a decade, since I last lived at my mom's house, but over that same decade I've always lived within an easy drive from either my mom's or my dad's houses, and often went over to see one or the other of them, say to have dinner or go out to dinner with them, and neither of them objected to me bringing over a load of clothing to wash while I was there. Plus, I was spending most of my time at home, alone, working on the computer or a novel or a website or whatever, and if it wasn't so hot that I was sweating, I could easily wear the same clothing more than once.

Now that I'm living with Malaya we go out more often than I did in the past, and it's been sweaty hot on and off for months, and she gets a lot of clothing dirty with her daily work outs and needing to dress up somewhat for work.  Her parents live in the area, but it's too far for a regular visit to wash clothing, even if that wasn't way too janky a thing to do, and anyway, we're usually doing 4 or 5 loads of wash at once, with a couple of weeks of dirty clothing.  So we go to a laundromat, and usually take up 5 machines for washing and 4 driers once the stuff is done.  It's not that big an ordeal with both of us loading machines and the washing taking 26 minutes, and then both of us unloading the washers and loading the driers, which take about 30 minutes to dry the stuff.  While we're waiting we walk around the strip mall or browse in Blockbuster or just sit and talk on a bench outside.  It usually runs us about $15 ($2 per washer, and $.25 per 7 minutes per dryer), but that's not the end of the world for a fee I owe half of, and only incur about twice a month.

The funny part about it is the other people there.  Especially when they try to talk to us.

Most of the people there are women, since gender stereotype fulfilled, it's mostly women who do the clothes washing. They don't talk, at least not to us, at least not that I've ever seen.  They load, they put in money, they go sit down and read for 30 minutes. When the wash is done they get up, load their clothing into the dryers, sit down for another 30 minutes, then they fold, then they leave. Very businesslike and not interested in chit chat, unless a couple of women know each other and talk some in the rest area by the door.  Most of them are 30-50's, and in fact I've hardly ever seen anyone there washing clothing (as opposed to children who are baggage with their mom) who is younger than Malaya.  Since there is a college in the area I find that sort of odd, but I guess they've got laundry rooms in the dorms. Or else the kids just wear the same jeans like 5 weeks in a row, washing their underwear at night in the sink, and go home with a pile of laundry that's so gamey it can sit upright in so realistic a human fashion that cops let them drive in the carpool.

Anyway, the talkative types are the men.  They're always in their late 30's or 40's or 50's, and are always in there alone.  I've never seen a male/female couple there besides Malaya and I.

I know, I know, I'm whipped.  I should just snap my fingers and announce, "My clothes needs washin', bitch!.  And bring me 'nother beer while yer up." and out would go the little woman with the dirty clothing.  I'll work on my chauvinism next week, I promise.

Obviously the guys who are in there alone washing stuff need to work on theirs (Or perhaps they have been, which is why they're alone and washing out their own skidmarks?) and perhaps they feel nervous or something, being out of their element?  Anyway, they are often chatty. Malaya tells me that guys talked to her far more than she wanted them to when she was in Laundromats on her own in the past, and that trend continues, even when she's there with me.  The first time we went I had to go run a couple of errands after we put the clothes in, and she tried to stand there and read while they washed, but was largely thwarted by a weird guy who kept trying to involve her in a conversation about which of the dryers worked the best, and was the best value.

The second to last time we were in there a guy started talking to us about washing machine loads and how much the given machines could take at once.

The last time, on Wednesday, when we walked back in to get our stuff out of the washers and put them in the driers, an Indian guy in his late 40's was there folding stuff up on the huge folding tables, and felt compelled to start small talking about how much he liked that Laundromat.  He asked if we were students in the nearby college, and then once we replied with non-committal mumbles, he launched into an address in which he praised the exceptional size of the folding tables at that Laundromat, and then commented on the quality of the dryers. 

It was all together creepy.  Like meeting "Mr. Obsessed by Laundry Man!"

Admittedly, what the hell else are you going to make small talk with total strangers about, while you're in a Laundromat?  (Correct answer: nothing.  Smile if you make eye contact and fold your damn shirts up and get out.)

Malaya has even less patience with that sort of bullshit than I do, so usually when some guy like that, or some salesman in a store, or someone who wants us to sign a petition to legalize goat love comes up, she just smiles and says, "We're just browsing, thanks." in her most sunniest public voice (she could do radio commercials, she has such a great public voice) and if that doesn't work to fend them off, she leaves me to deal with the idiot while she walks away to continue just browsing, thanks.

I get a perverse sort of pleasure out of observing annoying human behavior, while she is just depressed by it, plus I can harvest from it for my blog, while she just wants the earth to open up beneath them and swallow them whole. Or at least temporary God power to call down a lightning strike which would render them mute for long enough that she could make her escape, unmolested.

I didn't reply to the guy in the Laundromat either, just sort of nodded and smiled (not that I fake smile very well) and fortunately he shut up once we were both working to unload our washing machines.  We left after that and went to walk around the strip mall, and while walking I asked Malaya, "If we return and find that guy elbow-deep in your still-damp panties, is it okay if I punch him?"

She graciously consented, and we continued our merry little traipse about.

In conclusion, if you want someone to talk to at a Laundromat, bring a friend, or a cell phone, or develop schizophrenia.  Because no one else there, especially not Malaya or me, want to talk to you.  And especially not about how big the folding tables are, or how hot the dryers go, or how someone else left their clothing in for too long earlier and it looked like it was practically going to catch on fire, as the 70ish man told me last time, while Malaya was happy to be partially hidden behind me, as she folded up our jeans.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.