I'm sorry but the coin laundry is a depressing place. I don't care what your reasons are for being there the coin laundry is a sad, dismal place with ancient machines, stale snacks and broken down seating. It's hot and stuffy and smells of fried dryer sheets and body odor.
When I moved out on my own I had to make regular weekly trips to the coin laundry, because honestly what 20-something can afford to buy their own washing and drying machines? So every week I'd gather my wads of change, geared with at least one magazine but preferably a good book and haul my load up to the laundrymat . There's nothing more boring than sitting at the laundrymat watching clothes spin and dry for hours that never seem to end.
There's a certain etiquette one must follow while withering the time away watching the spin cycle. You must make sure to give your fellow coin droppers a wide berth so as to allow plenty of space to spread out and fold their piles of personals. You'll need to give yourself a good 5 to 10 minutes of adjusting to the atmosphere before enganging your neighbor with polite conversation. You don't want to startle anyone. Everyone is slightly on edge, keeping an eye on their things and vying for positioning, so just give yourself a few moments to spot the Omega before cramming your way in there.
By the time I was married I had officially graduated from the coin laundry to my very own in home washer and dryer. My first house was rather small so we had to use the "apartment" size machines - you know the type? The washer is on the bottom and the dryer is attached to the top so it fits into a small space? It was a good machine and I was very grateful to have it. It's the same thing when you've spent your whole life washing dishes by hand and then finally get a dishwasher. Oh it's fabulous! Have you experienced this little life pleasure? I don't think I can ever go back to washing my dishes by hand, now that I've been spoiled with the dishwasher's ease of use and delightful ability to allow me the time to accomplish other chores while it works it's wonders. Right now for instance - the dishwasher is gently running it's cycle while I write this blog. My hands are not dried out nor slighly burned from the hot water and my nails are not chipping. And I have time to write which is clearly the best part.
Unfortunately machines are just machines and they are subject to breaking down from time to time. Sometimes they break down due to user error (like the time I forgot to empty the lint trap and it got all clogged up), and sometimes they break down due to age and excess use. Machines need regular maintenance and without this they tend to get crabby and break down. Thankfully I have a husband who can fix just about anything that needs fixing around the house. He's quite handy to have around. I'm not sure what I would do without him...Probably end up living in squalor with broken light bulbs, spazzing smoke detectors and chipping paint at every turn. So it goes without saying that when our dryer recently took a crap and died I was sure that my husband would be able to take the machine apart, figure out the problem and have it fixed before dinner. No such luck.
We were right in the middle of cooking a nice Sunday dinner of home made spinach pie with rice pilaf when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Spinach pie is not a highly complicated dish but it is rather time consuming to prepare with several components. It's not a meal we make regularly but its one of my husband's favorites and one of the few meals he likes to make by himself (or at least be a major part of), he had been craving it for a couple weeks so he was really excited to make it on Sunday. While he was chopping and sauteing the onion I was doing some sous chef work for him (prepping the cooking utensils, melting the butter, rinsing the spinach etc.) and at the same time I was getting the laundry started, I was rushing to get the first load from the washer into the dryer and the next load into the washer so I could return to my aforementioned kitchen duties before something tragic could happen. My husband doesn't spend a great deal of time in the kitchen so I like to keep an eye on him if he's cooking dinner...Just in case. He had started laying the filo dough in the pan and spreading the melted butter over top when we both heard a horrible sound coming from the laundry room. It was a low groaning sound that made us both look up from our work in confused horror. Something was clearly not right and since we were both covered in melted butter and feta cheese it was obviously not the sound either of us wanted to hear.
The dryer had stopped on it's own. It sounded like the motor kicked the bucket, I was afraid to try and check the problem out myself for the same reason I am afraid to leave my husband alone in the kitchen; with my luck a fire would have started. So we set dinner aside and went to check out the problem together. He pulled the machine out and tried to take it apart to find the cause of the problem. While he worked on that I returned to the kitchen to finish spreading the filo dough before it dried out. I knew we were in for a long night when I heard the following two phrases coming from the laundry room: "Oh come on!" and then: "Motherfucker!" Whenever those words are uttered while he is trying to fix something I know there is a major problem. He returned to the kitchen looking mildly defeated as it's not often there's a problem he can't fix. And then he said it, the 7 words no one wants to hear: "We have to go to the laundrymat." Ugh. Not at all what I was hoping to hear at that moment. He explained that he didn't have the right tools to open up the machine and he didn't want to break it so he wanted to call in a professional. But who can you get to come fix a dryer on a Sunday night? No one. We even reconciled ourselves to paying an arm and a leg to get someone out there that night but no one was available. Most places weren't even open let alone available and so we had to make peace with the fact that we would be spending our Sunday evening at the damn coin laundry.
Dinner came first however. There was no way that we were going to let all that hard work and delicious food go to waste, so we finished cooking the pie and pilaf and enjoyed a scrumptious dinner. Thankfully I had already put two loads into the wash so we only had one load left to wash while the other two dried so it wasn't like we had to spend several hours at the laundrymat, it was only about an hour and a half or so. I brought my book and my husband was delighted to spend his time getting the high scores on an old Centapede and Ms. Pacman arcade game. There weren't very many people there when we arrived; one woman drying a comforter who claimed she only goes to the laundrymat for this reason as if she had to justify why she was there to the rest of us patrons, and another woman who was doing about 20 loads for what appeard to be an entire litter of children (although she probably only had a couple kids, but we all know how kids clothes tend to pile up like Mt. Rushmore when we aren't looking), she too felt the need to explain why she was there - her dryer was on the fritz as well. I'm not sure why we feel the need to explain ourselves to the other coin laundry goers, it's as if we are embarrssed by being there. Honestly there is no reason to be embarrassed, we're all there doing the same thing so we should be comrads. We should look out for each other and assist each other if needed. When the woman with all the loads was packing up her baskets getting ready to leave I nudged my husband and indicated he should offer to help her out - she had about 5 baskets loaded to the brim and was all by herself. He could have held the door for her if nothing else. He did offer, but she politely refused the gesture. Eventually we were left alone which was a bit of a relief, I'm not very comfortable engaging strangers in random conversation but at the same time I feel rude to ingore them.
The next day we did get a professional out to the house and he found something very interesting that had caused the dryer malfunction. Apparently I was not paying attention when changing the loads out - I had taken the lint trap out to clean it and had set it aside while I loaded the dryer. I do this all the time, it's my routine. I wait until the clothes are all loaded in before returning the lint trap to it's home, I don't know why, it's just what I do. Well....I guess I should have been focusing a little better because the maintenance man found one of my socks had fallen into the trap and I had unwittingly crammed it down into the machine when I put the lint trap back into position. How the hell I managed to do this is beyond me but when he pulled out the culpret it was clear that the dryer had broken down due to user error and not excess use this time.
Thankfully the price to fix the problem was relatively cheap compared to what we had anticipated paying on Sunday night. We also found a great company who came out quickly and fixes all sorts of appliances - just in case my beloved dishwasher decides to bite the dust we know who to call. And lessoned learned - after cleaning the lint trap it must be returned prior to loading the clothes.
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