Eclectic Eccentrics

or, “Does Anyone Else Wash Their Fucking Sheets?!”

Today I decided to finally do laundry. I haven’t done laundry since I had my nervous breakdown and the health center lady gave me 3 Xanax, partially because I’m lazy, partially because I haven’t needed to, and partially because I have no money. So today I put $5.00 on my laundry card during lunch and began the daunting task of paying $1.75 to wash and dry one load of laundry.

However, being the clean-freak genius that I am, I decided that today was also a good day to change my sheets and wash all of my blankets (3 including the comforter makes 4), because you should change your sheets about every 2 weeks and should be washing your blankets and things regularly. Well, apparently I’m the only person who does either of those things because when I asked around how the fabulous washers/driers hold up against comforters (cheap, yet still larger than most laundry items) I received answers that were all along the lines of “Why are you washing your comforter? What have you been doing/done to/on/with/in it?”

Sigh.

So, I decided I would try for two loads of laundry. The first I would wash my comforter and the larger blanket, and the second would go the smaller two blankets, my old sheets, and the few clothing items I had (mostly socks and underpants, a few undershirts and a hand towel). 

After the 45 minutes of waiting for my laundry to come out of the washing machine, I opened the front loading doors to discover, to my horror, that there was still soap on my blankets. So, I hand rinsed both items in the sink between the washing machines (we have two washers and two driers, but one of the driers has been broken since October), wrung them out as best I could, and shoved them in the drier with very shallow hopes that they would dry on one cycle. The other load of laundry went in, and I went back upstairs to “study”.

An hour later and, viola!, they were still damp. Not sopping, but too damp to hang up above the tub nobody uses until bedtime. So, after putting Load 2 in the one drier, I stuffed my damp blankets into my laundry bag and hauled them to Stewart (which the dorm Odell, my dorm, is connected to, conveniently enough). 

Stewart (aptly sharing the same name as an abusive ex-boyfriend of mine, though spelled differently; this is also the “Wellness” themed dorm, which I thought could only be more ironic if I was actually living there) has six washers and driers, a dry rack, and three space heaters in the laundry room. Those sober bastards. So I put my comforter in one drier, the blanket in another, and spent another $1.50 on drying them. Again.

By the time all of my laundry had finished drying (a total of 3 separate loads that I had to collect and tote back to my room on the second floor of Odell), I had spent $5.00 on what was really half a load of clothes, one set of sheets, three blankets and my comforter.

And the comforter and the larger blanket are still damp.

Time of laundry adventure start: ~12:00PM

Time of laundry adventure end: ~5:00PM