The first rule is to save every quarter you come across. Never spend them on anything.
Arrive early on Sunday and take up three washers in a row: lights, darks, other. At $1.50 a load, you can’t get more particular than that.
In summer, you don’t have to think about the soap, but in winter, if you forget and leave the bottle of Surf in your car, you’ll have to defrost it before you can pour it into the machine. Or worse, you’re out of soap and have to buy the little box from the dispenser. It’s 20 degrees out and the water is so cold in the machines, the detergent never dissolves.
When you first started doing your laundry in public, you’d watch people out of the corner of your eye, a t-shirt from a 10K four years ago, three pillowcases, a lot of black socks. You felt a little shy about sorting your clothes out: the dish towels, the jeans you’ve worn three weeks, underwear. But now, the intrigue has worn off. Dump it in, put the quarters in, a grab a book.
Laundry says you’re nothing special. Laundry says your clothes stink and you’re a mess. It says no matter who you are and how you spend your time, no matter how many soup kitchens you volunteer for and little puppies you rescue, you will still have to do laundry. Gandhi had laundry. Charles Manson has laundry. Newborn babies have tiny laundry.
We are all citizens in the democracy of laundry.
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