Linkstew

I did four loads of laundry today, and then I dumped it out on my bed so I'd have to put it away before I could go to sleep.

Since I've started college, I've developed this strange superstition of needing to have clean sheets at the beginning of the semester. I can't account for why I started doing this, but I did. And so last night, I washed my bedclothes.

Of course, doing laundry is always an ordeal for me, and last night was no different. For starters, 2 out of the 3 washing machines at my apartment are currently out of order, so I had to serialize my loads.

But as usual, it was the drying end of things that gave me more trouble. This time, 1 of the 3 driers were out of order. Worse, the coin eaters on both of the working driers were stuck, so I had to pound on them for quite awhile to get them to pop out. And of course, once I put my quarters in they got stuck again. And of the four times I put quarters into those driers, one of the times it not only ate the quarters but got stuck so badly that I couldn't get it back out at all.

But in a moment of clarity last night, I figured out not just one, but two reasons why those driers always seem to do such a bad job.

1. When I went down after my first load in the drier should have been finished, it was still all wet. I was about to feed it more quarters, when it occurred to me to hit the Start button again -- and the drier started back up. When I came back down later, they were all perfectly dry. Maybe someone opened the drier and didn't hit start when they closed it?
2. On my second load, some of the sheets got wrapped up in each other and didn't get dry, so I had to run them through again. I let them run for about half an hour and came down and opened the drier and took the sheets out while it was still running. As I was about to leave, it occurred to me to hit the start button... Maybe other times, people take out loads early, and then I put my clothes in and hit start, and only get half a cycle of drying, despite putting in more quarters?

Lesson learned? Always press the start button before putting in more quarters.

The very fact that I'm doing my Laundry at 7:30 am should be a sign that things aren't going according to plan... But when things aren't going well, I should know better than to try to do my laundry, because laundry always seems to raise my stress levels.

So I opened the door to my apartment's laundry room and reached for the light switch, and it wasn't there. "That's new," I mused as I whipped out my every trusty Microlight and spotted the motion sensor at the other end of the laundry room, all the way up by the ceiling.

But the fact that I was walking around in the room with my Microlight out was a bad sign. I walked over to the light, and stood on my very tiptoes, and even had to boost myself up off of one of the dryers a little to reach the motion sensor, and I waved my hand in front of it, and ... nothing happened.

So I rubbed my finger across the sensor, and the lights came on! Okay, so far so... very irritating.

So I went and started putting my whites in the wash, when suddenly the light went back out. I tried jumping up and down, and I tried walking over to the light and holding my laundry bag directly in front of the sensor...

But to no avail. In the end, I had to stand on my tiptoes and prop myself up off the dryer and touch the damn sensor again.

The light went out five more times while I was putting my clothes into the wash. Every time I had to go to the other end of the room and climb up and touch the sensor.

So I put my quarters into the machine, and pushed in the changer, and ... nothing happened. I looked behind the machine, and it was plugged in, and when the light went out again I gave up, and went back up to my room and got more quarters.

So I then had to move my (now soaked in liquid detergent) clothes to another washer, and turn the light back on 3 more times, and spend another $1.25 of my precious quarters...

And I haven't even gotten to drying yet! And drying is what usually gives me troubles, so I can't even begin to imagine what's going to go wrong today! Ah!!!

"This is weird, it's like AirPort, for irons."
--my roommate keith, on my cordless iron

I've been trying to do laundry since I woke up at noon or so. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn't think it would take 9 hours to do three loads of laundry with three washers and three dryers, or even with one washer and one dryer. But it was silly of me to assume that anything in Berkeley should be considered a "normal circumstance".

Basically, everyone is trying to do laundry today, but someone is holding up the show by not taking their clothes out of the dryer. I just went down to the laundry room and found three full dryers (one of which had my clothes), three full washing machines, and three loads of wet clothes sitting on top of the dryers (two of which were mine). So I took out my dry clothes and put in some of my wet clothes, and realized that I was dealing with idiots.

As long as the dryers take twice as long as the washers (which they do), you're not going to get done any sooner by usurping someones clothes from a washer to start your own. You're just going to have wet clothes sitting in a washer for at least two hours, and even then, if someone sneaks into the laundry room while you're napping, you get bumped even further down the line. You better hope you had nothing in there that would wrinkle.

The source of the problem is three-fold: 1. People are stupid. 2. People don't realize that the dryers can dry about a load and two thirds effectively, and forget that a dry cycle takes twice as long as a wash cycle. And 3. some moron has had his clothes in one of those dryers for about four hours.

But all of my clothes have now been washed, and I control one of the dryers, so I should be home free. Unless one of the five people with wet clothes dumps my clothes out the second they finish...

Tonight I finally got my laundry schedule back on track. I have about two loads worth of clothes, and every semester up until now I had my laundry synchronized so that I'd do both loads every two weeks. But when I got back from winter break this year, my laundry cycle got off, and I was doing a load ever week, alternating back and forth between the light and dark. I finally got so tired of the weekly chore that I just didn't do laundry last week. So tonight, I'm doing both loads of laundry, and after tonight, I'll return to my regularly bi-weekly laundry schedule.

Speaking of laundry, today's episode of my History of Technology class was moderately interesting; The topic was, surprise surprise, laundry. Well, it was more general than that, but we kept returning to the example of laundry. The actual topic was the migration of technologies to and from the house.

Way back in the day, the women of the house did the laundry (among multitudinous other things) by hand. Then, in the 1850's, commercial laundries developed because those 49er's were too busy hunting for gold to be bothered with clean clothes. The industry grew and grew, until the electric washer was developed in the early 20th century and laundry returned home. Strangely enough, though, other cultures, including France and somewhere in latin america, send their laundry out to be professionally cleaned to this day. More Work For Mother by Ruth Cowan discusses aspects of technology transfer to and from the home in American culture.

Personally, I'd totally go in to have someone do my laundry for me, assuming reasonable prices. It's a pity that commercial laundry was quelched by some aspect of the American culture, because I'd love to not have to deal with laundry ever again.

I discovered tonight why I don't make my bed very often: It's a fucking pain in the ass.

You see, I got irritated with how loose my sheets had gotten, so I decided to remedy this. What this doesn't take into account is my bed is on the top bunk, so the process of making the bed involves way more physical exertion and acrobatics than I should be doing at my age. Bugger that. I'll just sleep on top.