Laundry Room Etiquette

image via www.knowmemes.com

Laundry: a boring activity that all college kids despise doing and therefore put it off until they are all out of clothes and are forced to do it.

As we all know, doing laundry sucks, but what makes it even worse are the campus facilities for doing laundry. In order to make the laundry experience a little less painful, I have decided to compose a list of a few common courtesy laundry guidelines, that don’t take a lot of effort on the individual?s part, but will benefit everyone as a whole.

1) Time Your Clothes

Since the laundry rooms barely have enough machines as it is, it’s really annoying when someone?s clothes just sit in there for “hella” days. Don’t be that person, because people will get angry, and they WILL remove your clothes. If you don’t want to wait in the laundry room while your clothes are gettin’ clean, make sure to time them so you’ll know exactly when you are finished. This will allow more people to do laundry in a time efficient manner, and no one will scream at you, steal your stuff, or throw it on the ground in a wet soppy pile.

2) Don’t Mess With People’s Stuff

If you encounter a person who didn’t follow step one (shame on them), I wouldn’t advise you to remove their clothes. Of course it is annoying when they leave them in there, but if you take them out, someone else might take the clothes (by accident or on purpose), and that wouldn’t be all too fun for the person who now literally has no clothes, since they waited so long to do laundry. Also, don’t throw their things on the ground. The floors are usually pretty nastified and that person just paid to have their stuff cleaned. They will most likely get really mad, and know it’s you who did it, since your clothes will now be running in their machine. Let’s keep the laundry room a theft-free environment, because no one wants to have to stay down there guarding their clothes. Lastly, don’t steal someone’s laundry card, that’s just not cool, man. Most cards don’t have more than ten bucks on them anyway and you won’t be able to reload it. You also don’t want that person to hunt you down once they realize they forgot their card.

3) Clean Out Your Left-Over Detergent?

You know what’s an awesome feeling? Stuffing all of your clothes into a tiny washer that is about to explode, only to find out that there is a bunch of leftover, chunky detergent in the detergent holder. I once just poured my detergent in, since I didn’t have anything to clean the gunky one out with, and my clothes came out so soapy that I had to pay for another rinse cycle on a different machine. Talk about annoying. If you notice your detergent clumped (this usually happens with the powder ones, which we aren’t supposed to use anyway), then please remove it so the next person won’t be stuck with overly soapy clothes.

4) Clean The Lint Out Of The Dryer

You know that thing that holds lint, that thing that you always “forget” to clean, that thing that is now bring pink from the new bedding you just bought? Yeah that thing! Make sure to clean it when you are done drying your clothes. In order for the dryers to function properly, the lint catcher needs to be clean. It only takes about five seconds, so try to “remember” next time.

5) If It’s Broken, Leave A Note

More times than not, you will encounter problems when you are washing and drying your clothes. Whether the washer soaks your clothes, the dryer doesn’t dry, or a machine isn’t taking your card, it would be awesome to write a note and stick it on said machine to save a bunch of people from going through the same hassle. Of course a lot of the machines don’t work perfectly, but if they start having major problems, everyone would appreciate knowing. There are also numbers to call about fixing the machines, so if you have time that would be awesome! The sooner the problem is called in, the sooner someone will be able to fix the machine, and make it so more people can wash again.

Happy washing!