My washing machine is broken. Oh, it turns on. It even sloshes the laundry around in dirty water. But, that dirty water won’t drain out, and I’m left with VERY wet dirty laundry. (As opposed to slightly dirty dry laundry.) A service call is scheduled – but my cat Omaha is on his last pair of clean pants, so an alternative had to be found – and the options seemed to be hand-washing Omie’s pants (and eventually some of my own) or heading to the coin laundry.
So, I went to the laundromat on Sunday afternoon. As I feared, the laundromat was NOT air conditioned. It was HOT. There was a single pitiful fan, but all it did was blow hot air around the room. It was the hottest day so far this summer, and I was dripping with sweat.
I haven’t been to a laundromat in a long time. It’s been about 10 years since I used any coin laundry, and it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve been in a public laundromat. Prices have increased. I naively assumed it’d be 75 cents a load – like it was years ago. Not even close. $1.50 per load for the top-loading machines. Apparently now washing machines are all ranked by size and pounds of laundry they will clean (as if I had weighed my laundry before going there) and the washing machine prices ranged from $1.50 to $4.00 per load. My pocketfull of quarters was not going to cut it.
No one seemed to mind the sweaty crazy cat lady washing tiny little cat overalls. Everyone tended to their own business. I brought a book, so I didn’t have to watch “Fresh Prince” in Spanish.
Unfortunately there were no dryers available when my wash was finished. I opted to lug the very heavy wet laundry home and dry it there. (My dryer still works.)
So, I have clean laundry and Omie has clean pants. (Why Omie wears pants is another story…)
