You've reached that time of week again when you're down to your last pair of underwear, your favorite shirts are in the hamper and you can't put off doing laundry anymore. You pack up your detergent, dryer sheets and towels hanging on the rack, and you begin the descent to the underworld—excuse me—the journey to the laundry room for two or three hours of monotonous torture.
Checking to see what machines are open.
You check Laundry Alert to see if there are any machines available and you start to do some planning. If I go right now, I can get the two washing machines I need! The rare moment of bliss occurs when you see all seven washers open.
When your clothes are taken out of the machine by someone else.
I've set up alerts on my phone to let me know when my laundry is done. I am coming to get it. Quit touchin' my stuff, ya jerk.
When your clothes are stolen out of the dryer by someone else.
This actually happened to an acquaintance of mine. All of his clothes got stolen out of the dryer when he was doing laundry, so he had to go buy new ones. These weren't jeans and T-shirts. It was his clothes for concert choir that evening, and he had to make an emergency run to the nearest mall in order to adhere to concert dress code. Call me crazy, but I don't understand why anyone would steal someone else's clothes.
When Laundry Alert lies to you.
I l lived on the fourth floor of my building, and the laundry room was in the basement of the adjoining building. I was annoyed when I would go all the way down there just to see that the washing machine isn't done, but is still in the rinse cycle. That's cool. Oh, that dryer wasn't actually available? Thanks, Laundry Alert. You're a real pal. I guess I'll just sit here and study.
When your clothes still aren't dry.
Seriously? You've had them in the dryer for at least two hours, and no matter how many times you restart the dryer, your clothes are still damp. Bonus points if someone opened it to check if your clothes were dry and then forgot to shut it and restart it.
Finding the right time to do laundry.
Yeah...good luck with that. There was never really a good time to do laundry because it all depended on the time of day, your personal energy level and how much time you had in your schedule. If you waited on a Friday at 3 p.m. when everyone's trying to do laundry before going home or going out for the weekend, you were in for a rough time. If you waited until midnight or 3 a.m. when hardly anyone was using the machines, you still had to commit to at least two hours of waiting on your laundry. What if I had something come up? And by "something," I meant staying in my room, making no noise and pretending that I didn't exist.
