The Laundry Saga

I've written about spending a lot of money at the laundromat. I live in a small house and I don't have a regular sized washer or dryer. I do have a small portable Haier washer that I use as much as I can. It hooks up to my sink and has been a great little workhorse for me. It does have it's limits. It has a very small capacity and I can only wash one set of sheets at a time, one pair of jeans plus a couple shirts, you know, small loads of stuff. If I load it incorrectly and try to shove too large of a load, nothing gets really clean. It also then oversuds and I end up with spillage on my floors. If I'm really good and do a couple loads during the week, I can keep up with my clothes. Sometimes.

The machine works OK for the most part, but it can not handle the animal laundry (too much of it and too bulky) nor can it wash or wash well the large bath towels, bath mats, jackets, etc. For these items, it's off to the laundromat I go.

What I do like about the laundromat is that in less than two hours I can wash, dry, fluff, and fold a bunch of laundry. It's one of the few times I multi-task and multi-task well. I go to the laundromat put my clothes in the washer and then take off for a quick grocery shop or other such shop. I get back to the laundromat in time to put everything in the dyers and usually I read a magazine or book while the clothes tumble dry. In good weather, I do hang as many clothes as I can out on the clothes line. Tough to do in the winter, clothes will freeze before they will dry.

I have two nice laundromats I use, both are clean, and safe (safe meaning it's OK to leave my things in the washer and not worry about my clothes getting stolen). One location has these great triple loaders that are perfect for the animal laundry. I can put all the animal laundry in the machine, turn on the hot wash and my stuff comes nice and clean and without animal hair all over it (and yes the laundromat is OK with me doing animal laundry there).

The downside to this is IT IS NOT CHEAP. I can easily spend $20 a weekend on washing and drying all those clothes and items. A washing machine runs anywhere from $1.75 to $6.00 depending on the size of the machine and 25c only gets you 7 minutes of drying time. When the dog decided it would be fun to pee on my blanket, the whole blanket had to get washed. I have this one dog that likes to stealth pee on and in my bed. It's gross, it's disgusting and it's costly. Every once in a while he manages to sneak in to my room and does this almost under my nose. I scream, I yell, I yell at myself for leaving my bedroom door open, I strip the bed and then I go to the laundromat, again.

As they say, it's wash, rinse and repeat.