Laundromat

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but it’s expensive to live in New York City. Living here almost always requires some form of compromise, unless you make a million dollars. (Not even an exaggeration.) Some people compromise on location. Some on natural light. My roommate and I compromised on laundry.

Technically, there’s a laundry situation in the building next to ours that we have access to, but when we both have sheets and towels and a week’s worth of workout clothes, it makes more sense to make the trek to the laundromat.

Today was one of those days.

Sarah and I strip our beds, bag up our piles of laundry, walk down our four flights of stairs, and Santa-Clause our sacks the two and a half blocks to our trusty laundromat. We separate our whites, reload our cards, and pass our joint bottle of detergent back and forth until all our loads are going. As a reward, we spend the 30 washing minutes walking to and from our favorite coffee shop (turns out, I really love a Taro latte).

Back at the laundromat, newly caffeinated, we begin the process of transferring everything to the dryers. We empty our clothes and sheets and towels into the large basket carts, and wheel them over to the stacked dryers. I like to take two bottom dryers side-by-side, mostly just because it’s habit. Sarah likes to take a top and bottom stack. Side-by-side, we get to work. I carefully weed out my not-to-be-dried items and pop them into a clean canvas grocery bag. Everything else gets split evenly between my two bottom machines. Once Sarah and I are done, we head home for 40 minutes of couch time.

My timer goes off much too quickly, and we are up and at ‘em once more.

At this point, morale is low. I am tired. I am cranky. I am dreading carrying my clothes back up four flights of stairs. I am really dreading making my bed.

I kneel in front of my left bottom dryer and pile everything into a laundry bag. Just as I’m finishing with dryer #1, getting ready to empty dryer #2, a guy pulls up his cart of wet clothes next to me. I watch in horror as he opens the dryer above my full, finished dryer and begins taking the items from his basket cart and placing them into the empty machine. One. By. One.

Sarah is on his other side. I give her a look behind his back. She gives me back a shrug. I take my half-full laundry bag, step aside, and accept my fate of waiting.

The guy inspects a pair of shorts. Throws them into the dryer. Pulls out a shirt. Places it back into a separate mesh bag. Socks. Dryer. Pants, mesh bag.

At this point, Sarah is finished. She leans against a table in the center of the room, pulling out her phone.

45* minutes later, this dude’s laundry has finally been separated out and he starts the dryer above mine. He slings the mesh bag over his back, and, without a backwards glance, heads out of the laundromat.

“That was hilarious,” Sarah says.

“I guess I have a slice,” is the only positive spin I can put on the situation, as I am at last able to unload the rest of my items.

Even after today, I am glad that we chose to sacrifice in-unit over natural light, but man oh man. It can be rough.

*this is obviously an extreme exaggeration. But it was a very long time.