Sunday, December 30, 2007

Race to the dryer

Jim and I usually go to the laundrymat on a weeknight. We have decided that is a good idea.

Today, around 4 pm, we traveled to our favorite place to do laundry - Bubbleland. We like it because you put cash on a debit card then to use in the machines - this means no carrying $25 dollars in change - a big plus in my non-pocketed pants world. We usually bring a couple books and the gameboy to pass the time, none of this was needed today.

It started off by pulling into the parking lot and only one space was available. We got a laundry cart from someone who was leaving. We put our 4 laundry bags (we haven't done laundry in about 3 weeks and we were doing our rugs and comforters as well) in it. We have to do a balancing act to even get in, but then we look for empty washers and they don't seem to exist. Lots of clothes that seem to be washed but no empty washers. We then go on a hunt; one of us finds one, and waves the other to bring one bag over. I ended up loading one of the 8 load washers with two bags worth of clothes! Then I notice that Jim has found several unused washers in another isle. They are much smaller, he has had to spread 1 bag amoung three washers. Then while he is finishing up that find - I hunt for others - which I found another isle down. We still had two comforters to find washers for when I realized that the 8 load washer had only 5 minutes to go; so I assumed I could just put the comforters in there. At about 4 minutes to go, I noticed a crowd forming at our big washer - others had also noticed that it was about to end - it looked like a fight might ensue - so I went over to stand guard, around this same time Jim noticed this to and noticed that was there, and he was thankful. In the remaining, three minutes we got ourselves situated so we could dump our clean clothes into the basket and place our comforters into the washer. Now, the issue was getting to a dryer...I mean, lots of people were vying for washers when we got there, so it was going to be a race for dryers too at this point.

We worked as a team unloading the big washer of all those clothes and like a relay team member, Jim passed me the cart as if it was the baton and said, GO! I raced over to the huge dryers which I had been watching to see if maybe I wouldn't have to split this load between many regular dryers. Sure enough, they were empty - until I got there. Some woman "saved" the dryers by putting one piece of laundry in each of the 50 lb dryers. Several men came over to me and said I should pull them out and put my batch in; I was mad but I couldn't do that - so I was stuck putting my huge load into several dryers. The rest of the laundry was much easier- but I still never had one chance to open my book or the gameboy.

Adventures in not having a washer and dryer at home.....see what most of you are missing!!!!

1 comment:

Alyzarin said...

Now I feel silly for being annoyed that it took us 20 minutes or so to reposition our dryer so we could use it after recent plumbing work in our basement. The floor is uneven, so once the dryer is moved, it's a lot of work to figure out how to position it so it won't rock when we try to use it.