It’s hard to find things to complain about in college, because let’s be honest, four years of living in freedom with your best friends and limited responsibility is as close to flawless as it gets. But if we’re going to talk about flaws, there is one major damper of living away from home that every college student knows to be true, and that is the worst, most dreaded day of the month (or week, if you’re really on top of your game)—laundry day. A reality of college: you never really get better at doing your laundry, but you do become a master of procrastinating washing your clothes until it’s almost an accomplishment. Every now and then you meet that super type-A personality that actually gets pleasure from folding socks—I have so much respect for them—but I’d bet the overwhelming majority could relate to the painful torture of carving aside time for the agonizing ritual of laundry day. Here are seven things all laundry haters can relate to:
1. You own absurd amounts of underwear and socks.
It is an absolute must to be stocked in this category. You will use every last pair until that cringe-worthy moment when you open your drawer and root around frantically to discover that alas, there are no more socks in sight…which means the time has come, and you're crying inside.
2. You never (rarely) wash your pants.
Leggings are one thing; you can’t get away with wearing them too many times without washing them. But jeans are a different ball game. Unless a) there is an embarrassing, impossible-to-hide stain or b) they are so stretched out they may as well be leggings, your jeans will be worn over and over and over again…all in the name of avoiding laundry.
3. You've re-worn workout clothes.
Ew, who does that? If you are truly committed to doing whatever it takes to push laundry day back, odds are you’ve committed the taboo of wearing your workout shorts more times than you should to go to the gym. After all, you’re just going to sweat in them anyway...fair logic, right?
4. The struggle when all the washers are taken.
You’ve finally, finally surrendered to your mountainous pile of clothes and accepted that you cannot go out in public the next day if you don’t do your laundry this very second. You lug your absurd amount of clothing to the laundry room, prepared with your Tide pods (who actually uses detergent?), when you see hampers and bags strewn over every available washer. No good deed goes unpunished, clearly. Yet another reason why you never want to set foot in that laundry room ever again.
5. It is seriously a never-ending process.
One of the reasons you avoid laundry like the plague is because it’s not a once and done kind of ordeal. You’re all too aware of how obnoxiously long the actual process is. Not only do you have to make the trek to the washer, but there’s also trip number two to transfer your clothes from the washer to the drier. And then a third adventure to retrieve your socks from the drier. Even after all of that, you’re far from the end. You have to hang the clothes that will undoubtedly shrink in the drier, which usually requires digging out your drying rack and reducing your already small room to the size of a shoebox. Then there’s putting everything away, which is usually a day or two long process, because who really has time for that?
6. The awkward encounter when you’re taking someone else’s clothes out and they catch you in the act.
You’ve timed your evening perfectly so that you can get a load of laundry in, run to the dining hall with your friends, and come back just in time to put your stuff in the dryer. Unfortunately for you, it’s Sunday, so everything is taken by the time you sail in five minutes before you’re supposed to be at dinner. You anxiously scan the timers on the washers and notice one of them is at zero. Screw it, you think before hastily shoving all of the wet clothes into a plastic bag. Sorry not sorry. When you turn around, you find yourself face to face with the owner of the clothes you just moved, and she doesn’t look very happy. Oops…
7. The sock black hole.
A small part of you resists doing laundry just because you know that when you do, there will be yet another abandoned sock without a match floating around in your drawer. One of the biggest mysteries of life, without question, is where all the mismatched socks go. The world may never know.
