Doing the laundry: Classic or Dud?

Me, I love doing laundry. It is a terrible thing that laundrettes in London are so expensive, because it was my favourite Saturday morning hungover ritual to go to the local laundrette in LIC, eat cheese sandwiches from the deli next door, and let the smell of suds rinse my hangover away. There is nothing better than a pile of freshly washed laundry. OK, well, yeah, there is actually lots, but it's still a wonderful thing.

Okay, before anyone thinks I'm completely on crack here, I don't actually do that, I just handwash shirts and then blow dry them if I have to. Pants are another story, I'll wear jeans 800 times before I wash them.

So, yeah, I often buy new clothes rather than wash them. I even ran out of money once through doing that. I'll bet Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't run out of money... :(

I hate it! I wash my undies in the shower sometimes to avoid it!

I just really hate doing laundry, it irritates the skin on my hands. And it's boring and I work long hours and I can't be bothered. The only reason I ever used to do it was because the laundry was right under the margarita place. Except Stephanie is a spoil sport and she decided she hated that place.

I was done with the whole idea of laundromats after I went to college back in 1567. Damn washboards.

I've heard of this before but what is the reason for it? The washing machine is hardly at the cutting edge of new consumer technology.

Result: no friends, cept you shower.

(ps "Washer" in UK English = very small ring made of rubber, leather or metal, for taps — and indeed showers.)

I'm talking gibberish. Time for bed.

I used to like change my underwear 3 or 4 times a day just cos I felt bad for all the underwear left unused for a month. I would get the weirdest looks doing my laundry - a guy even asked me, this was like in February - you have two pairs of pants in there and about 10 shirts, but this enormous pile of underwear, what is that about? I stopped doing that after that.

I have lived in some of the diviest homes London has to offer yet every one has had some kind of washer / dryer combination. What is going on with you people?

I had a huge dispute with flatmate once about whether using fabric conditioner diminishes the drying power of towels, and if so, whether the increased soft fluffiness was worth spending 20 extra seconds in the morning drying yourself. Must get out more......

This is what drives me insane about Paul- there is a practically brand new, and never used (except by me) IN HIS KITCHEN and he would rather go to Next and buy pants. And then wonders why we have no money for food! Dammit, the washing machine in my flat BROKE and I continued to do laundry by hand, in the kitchen sink. But this is probably because I've been living out of a damned suitcase for so long that I only have about 5 pairs of knickers, and if I didn't constantly do laundry, well, I'd be knickerless, and well, that's our keyboardist's job, not mine.

We don't have a tumble-drier so every bannister, radiator, chair-back will often have damp clothing draped over it.

And I have a huge pile of ironing waiting for me.

So NO, I don't like doing the laundry. Dud.

An equally tedious but unnecessary activity is washing up. Just buy take-aways or eat off party plates - it makes life much easier.

You'll be telling me next that flats in manhatten don't have toilets either and you all crap out of windows. Cleaning clothes is the easiest chore in the world and even a scummy sack of shit like me can happily do it.

But I like doing the washing up, I try to do it everyday, and if I don't, that's a sure sign there's something wrong. If I see piles of dishes lying around, it just makes me think there's going to be a horrible fight soon. Besides, doing dishes is very therapeudic.

Am actually doing my laundry right now as we speak! Hooray! Damn, I think I washed it in water that was too hot- all the blood will never come out now.

That's how I tie my shoes -- we're doing it the proper way and everyone else has got it wrong.

PERC enters the body when ingested with contaminated air or when consumed with contaminated food or water. Once in the body PERC can remain stored in fat tissue. Studies have documented that people who wear freshly dry-cleaned clothing at least once a week are at an increased risk of developing cancer. http://www.eces.org/articles/static/98031600098805.shtml

The British Method of shoelace tying is fiendishly complicated and I can't do it. However it has to be said that my laces come undone more often than any of my friends' so maybe there was something in my teacher's xenophobia.

Actually, looking at my fellow employees (and indeed myself), perhaps not...

I too used to be rubbish at tying ties, until I found this guide to tying ties using group theory. It is a little complicated, but if you scroll to the bottom there's a nicely notated list of knots with diagrams.

This phrase makes no sense to me.

By my estimate, unless Ally has a secret source of income that she's not telling us about, she in now more in deeper debt than all world governments put together.

As far as annoying housetasks go, I actually kinda like ironing. I just put the ironing board next to the stereo, put on some good music and do my thing, and since it requires no thinking or concentration whatsoever, I can just let my mind wander off wherever it wants to go while doing it. Laundry's a pain, though. My apartment building has a laundry room downstairs, but they lock it up at 10 PM 'cause you're not supposed to use it past that hour, and since the dryers are crummy and clothes need at least 2 spins in there to get fully dry, half the time my clothes end up locked in there until the next morning.

i don't think it's unreasonable to do everything in your power to avoid being like lenny kravitz.

I cant imagine not having a washing machine. Only laundry I know of anyone visiting is the dry cleaners for the suits, fancy clothes etc.

Will the fact Americans dont really use washing machines blow deems mind?

Il"&

I love doing the laundry. It's my job in the house.

Haha that was a pocket post, don't try to decrypt xp

I live in a housing association flat so don't & never will own a washing machine, we use a coin-op launderette in a neighbouring block. It's pretty pricy (£3.50 per cycle for the washers, 50p per 8 minutes for the dryers) but otherwise not the worst inconvenience. I quite like it except that it's one more damn thing I have to do in a day

Gonna sit down and work out which i love more out of sorting, washing, drying/hanging, folding/putting away and ironing tbh

Sheer flow bliss. Probably ironing.

haha god. My mum hates ironing. I love hoovering , I get it from my mum.

She told me when I was a toddler I used to follow her around so she bought me one of those 1970s toy hoovers and I then followed her around thinking I was hoovering.

I feel bad for you poor ilx peeps that have to use a laundromat. I had to use a laundromat one time when my washer broke. It really sucked! You have to carry your laundry in your car everywhere, such a huge pain in the ass, and it was expensive as hell! Makes me appreciate having my own home with my own washer and dryer.

we have a coin machine in our building, which sucks because first off who the hell still keeps mass quantities of quarters on them, so we have to go out to the bank every couple of weeks to get quarters, and worse the guy downstairs from us gets salty whenever we use the machine (which is, like, during normal weekend hours, we're not doing laundry at 3 am or whatever) and unplugs the machine every time we try to run it there. also apparently everybody where we live has a washing machine because you have to go halfway across town to find a fucking laundromat.

the place we're moving to next month has in-unit w/d which will be pretty nice honestly.

Tom D will remember Steamies

My building has a laundry room in the basement. My only issues are 1) when another resident gets to the laundry room before me and occupies most or all of the washing machines, and 2) the one elevator goes out of service. I've never been caught in it, but when I moved into this building the elevator had a way of going out of service after I'd started my laundry. Metrorail within walking distance tops the list of what I want from my next address, but an in-unit washer and dryer and two or more elevators are close behind that.

Doing laundry in a Laundromat or in a laundry room shared by everyone in a largish apartment building is a drag, so that's a dud. Doing laundry in your own dwelling is relatively painless, since the machine is only a few paces away and it does all the hard work, while you are free to do whatever. Not exactly a classic pastime, but it does have a soothing mindless quality that can be welcome at times.

Laundrettes sound like hell

I could do laundry forever

was a bit of a culture shock for me when i moved to canada, the fact that if you rent an apartment you generally have shared washing machines and dryers in the basement. our first place didn't even have that, we had to use the local laundromat. it was only a couple of blocks away and i would sometimes go and watch monday night football while i did my laundry, though generally i would be lazy as hell and just pay the proprietors to do all my washing for me and have it ready and folded the next day.

doing laundry is one of my least hated domestic chores and i don't even mind shared machines in the basement of the building, the problem for me with the shared machine aspect is the payment. last building only took quarters and one dollar coins, which i invariably never had enough of. current building uses a card system, the only convenient place that you can top up the card being in a mall that closes at 8pm during the week and 6pm on sunday.

our current flat is cold and draughty all the time and drying things takes forever. I am a big fan of treating myself to a trip to the launderette because for fifteen pounds I can take two IKEA bags full of clothes, hand them over to the woman at the counter and come back the next day to find everything washed, dried and folded. It would probably take me a week to get through that amount at home since I don't have a dryer.

Last week the lauderette caught fire though, so there is always an element of risk with these things.

I'm not sure that handing your clothes over to someone else who washes, dries and folds it for you would qualify as "doing the laundry", as envisioned in the thread C/D question.

of course it does

Then I enjoy piloting commercial airliners, generating hydroelectricity, and milling flour, too!

you should write more about these activities, they sound interesting

aw shucks! there's not much to tell. it's easy!

when I say I am a big of handing over my clothes to someone to deal with, I mean to say that I explicitly do not enjoy doing laundry at all, to the point I am willing to hand over cash to make it go away