Laundry annoyance

Posted by John
April 30, 2006

I live in a small apartment complex with a small laundry room — two coin-operated washers and one dryer. I wanted to do laundry this evening, and I had to wait an hour, nearly an hour and a half, for someone who left their clothes in the washers for at least that long (and possibly longer) after they were through washing.

Fair enough. I try to be conscientious about this, but I’d be lying if I said I never let time get away from me and forgot about my laundry.

But then they put their clothes in the dryer for an hour. That meant that even after my clothes finished their wash, I still had to wait half an hour to get them into the dryer.

Well, now it’s more than half an hour. Because our mysterious launderer, after having forgotten about his or her clothes in the washer, now seems to have forgotten about his or her clothes in the dryer. And this time, he or she knew (or should have known) that there was someone waiting on the machine.

Sometimes, discourtesy just gets to me.

UPDATE: I first took my clothes to the laundry room just before 6 p.m. It’s now 9:30, and I’m still waiting to get into the dryer. This is one of those cases where you want to write a nasty note and tape it to the dryer. But it wouldn’t do any good.

Personal

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  • Ivy
    I used to live in an apartment complex where 4 apartments shared 1 washer/dryer. We had a neighbor that was very rude and would do that all the time. So I just finally bought a cheap laundry basket at the dollar store and took their laundry out and put it in the basket with a note that said: "Sorry to have to pull your clothes out like this, but I have no clean undies! :)".

    Oddly, they left the basket in there, and pretty much always after that, when people had laundry to do and other people's stuff was in there, they would pull the stuff out and leave it in the basket. Worked for us, maybe you could do something similar?
  • Ivy - we used to do the exact same thing when we lived in an apartment. When I'd forget, they'd do it to me as well, and I didn't mind...I felt bad for leaving it in there in the first place. :)
  • All the years I used a laundromat, that was the ettiquette. In fact both in college and my first apartment there were baskets there for "neglected" clean loads. I think some people actually expect others to do that if they get caught up and can't make it back.

    Me, I never wanted anyone handling my clothes so I just sit in the 'mat and read a book.
  • erm why not just take their clothes out ... Ivy's idea of a cheap basket is a good one :)
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