High and Dry: Dirty Laundry

Before I left for college, my grandma told my mom that she had to teach me three things: 1) How to do laundry 2) Not to drink alcohol 3) Not to do drugs. Considering I only failed on the drinking front, I think I was pretty successful. Really though, had I followed all three strictly, I would have had a pretty boring social life. Perhaps I could have done people’s laundry for them while they went out and partied.

If we’re being completely honest, I probably can’t count learning how to do laundry as a real success either. I’ve never been particularly good at doing laundry. Granted, it’s hardly a challenging skill, but if there were some level of natural talent for such a thing, I would certainly lack it. Moreover, I’ve never been adept at taking the time to do my laundry once I have a full load. Instead, it piles up to be about one-and-a-half loads and then I just cram it all in there anyway.

During my first legitimately unsupervised laundry session at college, the dryer would not work because I had shoved in too many articles of clothing. Each time I hit start, it would whir for five seconds before the door would open and spill out some of my clothing. However, I found that if I manually held the door shut, the cycle would continue uninterrupted. On that note, I fetched some duct tape and taped the dryer door shut so that I wouldn’t have to physically hold it myself for forty-five minutes. Once the drying finally commenced, I left it alone for a while until I heard a lot of noise coming from the laundry room. Curious, I returned, finding that the dryer door was heaving against the tape in an attempt to break free and open, causing the dryer to jump and rattle in a spastic fit. The rattling had actually moved it a few feet away from its place against the wall. At this point, I realized why duct tape is not a common laundry supply.

This wasn’t my only laundry mishap that first year. I had purchased detergent from the 99-Cent Store – or at least that’s what I had assumed. The labeling on the container was in Spanish, and as it was later pointed out to me by someone who spoke Spanish after I had used it for several cycles, this bottle was not laundry detergent, but fabric softener. While fabric softener is nice as a supplement, it will not actually clean your clothes. If you knew me at this time and ever wondered why my clothes smelled so fresh, yet looked so dirty, there’s your answer.

By my second year of college, though, I had gotten the swing of things and could practically do my laundry all by myself. The closest laundry room to my dorm had notoriously awful dryers, the kind that would require at least two cycles to sufficiently dry the clothing. While this method was slightly costly, the alternatives were limited. On one occasion, I started a load, fully expecting to have to start it again nearly an hour later.

When I returned, however, I found that my damp clothing had been put on top of the machine. I will be the first to admit that there are debatable ethics when it comes to a shared laundry space. It’s not fair to hog one of the limited machines because you’re not prompt about picking your belongings up. I’m not sure I agree with removing someone’s clearly wet clothing to steal eir machine, but again, debatable ethics, so I probably would have let it slide were it not for the note. This note rested atop my barely dried clothes: “MAYBE IF YOU DIDN’T PUT SO MUCH IN, YOUR CLOTHES WOULD DRY!” This message was emphasized with a large frowny face to show the competing laundry-er’s contempt.

Granted, I probably had put too many clothes in, but it was hardly worthy of a mean-spirited note. Those dryers were rotten, and if this person had done laundry there previously, ey should know that. I had left my laundry unattended for ten minutes and then had my property disrespected. I was willing to bet from the rudeness exhibited that my rival would also not be timely about picking up eir load, so I waited for the cycle to end, watching from the stairway in case my theory was wrong.

As soon as the cycle ended, I ran to the machine and emptied the note-leaver’s possessions. Though this person had at least half of the amount that I had been attempting to dry, this clothing was still damp, too. Aha! Vindication! I quickly shoved my own clothes back into the dryer and started the cycle. Then I flipped over the piece of paper and scrawled a note of my own: “MAYBE IF YOU WEREN’T SUCH A BITCH, YOUR CLOTHES WOULD DRY!” I drew an even larger frowny face and decided it looked great sitting atop my rival’s damp clothing. At this point, I scrammed, as this action was purely passive-aggressive and I had no desire to have an actual confrontation.

I watched from my covert spot on the staircase to see who exactly my foe was. About five minutes later, a miserable wench of a person entered the laundry room. I heard a loud, frustrated whine and then a scream of “ASSHOLE!” Oh, darling, don’t get your panties in a wad. Oh wait, they are already in a wad: a damp, wrinkled wad because they didn’t dry properly through no real fault of your own -- except, perhaps, being a bitch.

I might not be an expert at laundry, but I can still be a winner. (I did, infamously, prove myself to be quite a loser in the laundry room during my senior year, too, but that’s neither here nor there.) I have to say that laundry is a lot more fun as a competitive event.