Laundry Day

There I was sitting on the top of the world
In a coin laundry
Well I could have been royalty
Sitting in the palace like a queen

Do you have a dollar

– Lisa Mitchell

We don’t have a laundry space, and don’t realistically have the facilities to run a washing machine in terms of water and power. We toyed with the idea of mini caravan washing machines but they get a lot of mixed reviews so we haven’t really made a final decision at this point.

We’re starting off by trying one of our local laundromats, with the plan to try the others in the area until we found one we like. We raided the house for all the gold coins we could find and set off. On this day it was pouring, heavily, as it had been all week, and the laundromat was much busier than I anticipated (where were these people’s laundries?! Are they off grid? On holidays? I hate talking to people so I’ll never know). This of course meant that all the good, simple, normal washing machines were taken and we had to use the one that looked like..something else. After we sorted our clothes, loaded the machines with golden boys and I spilt washing powder everywhere, we were good to go.

The instruction labels that had been put on the washing machine were faded and peeling off, and I have never seen washing machines so basic yet so complicated. I like to think I’m okay in the smarts department but this washing machine proved otherwise. With just a few numbers and a couple of letters, we resorted to just mashing all of them and kept pressing go in the hopes it would finally turn on. Shaun wanted to give up in the room of people but I wanted to persist (um we put $8 in there!) Aaand it finally turned on.. the type/length/temp of cycle? Impossible to tell.

Based on the other machine there was 40 odd minutes to waste so we went to the café on the corner for some food. Taking our clothes to the laundromat felt odd for some reason. Maybe because it felt in a way that we were travelling as opposed to being home. I can’t quite put my finger on it. The laundromat doesn’t feel like it will be the long term solution for us, stay tuned on what else we try! Not even ruling out bashing clothes against a rock just yet.

We sat and ate sandwiches & We even got free pies (yay) to take home for dinner because the café was closing for the day.

We took our loads of laundry home. Wet washing = 1000kg heavier, carrying through the rain = 1000000 times more annoying, having boules in the bottom of your laundry basket you forget were there = near impossible.  (boules are super heavy metal balls you play a game called boules with. I lug them around every time I move house because I think one day maybe I will play a game of boules – yet to actually happen)

……..

I wrote the above on our first week of laundromat life so fast forward to now. We’ve now been doing our laundry at the laundromat for a couple of months and I actually don’t mind it at all! We generally have breakfast/brunch/lunch, go for a walk or sit in the park. We usually have 2 or 3 loads and we get to do them all at once which is an amazing benefit of a laundromat. We got these laundry bags with a shoulder strap (meant for college students living in dorms I think) that have made lugging it back and forth so much easier. Plus, they have a sweet pocket for all our dollary doos and our Happi Earth laundry pump. Also we can hang them up in our room while we fill them during the week which saves space in our room.

I don’t know where we’ll go with our laundry later down the track but would love to hear all the options that are out there, and what anyone else has tried. I’d also like to take this moment to briefly complain about how many clothes Shaun goes through in a single week,.

HOW?! WHY?!