Every week, those of us living on campus find ourselves dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, to the battlefields in residence halls known as laundry facilities. Some enterprising individuals have turned putting off laundry, as if dodging the draft, into an art form, but sooner or later we all have to face the horrible reality that we’re out of underwear and socks, and there’s no more delaying the inevitable.
As a public service, I now submit for your perusal a field guide to likely encounters in the never-ending Laundry Wars:
Landmines
These are perhaps one of the most common sights on the battlefield, perplexing and confounding at once – those neglected, damp lumps of laundry abandoned in washers long after their cycles are completed. And if you’re unfortunate enough to run into a situation where all the washers are loaded with landmines? You could attempt to dig one out, and if you’re considerate, you may even relocate it to an empty dryer with a note to the owner. Such activity, though, is fraught with risk of trauma from being exposed to parts of a stranger’s wardrobe you wished you hadn’t seen.
Juggernauts
Few things strike more fear into the hearts of laundry warriors than arriving on the field to find a juggernaut already there, determinedly in the process of piling two or more massive loads of dirty clothes into the washers. The faint of heart are at this point reduced to a gibbering mass of panic, unable to do more than stare, transfixed, at the barrage of musty-smelling garments pouring from seemingly bottomless hampers. More seasoned veterans are still faced with a strategic dilemma. Do you dare cut in and try to secure the last remaining washer? Faulty dryers exacerbate matters further – even if you do stake a claim on a washer, will the juggernaut muscle you out of the good dryers that fateful 33 minutes later?
Snipers
It happens to the most diligent of warriors. Basking in the glory of successfully loading a washer with your clothes, you take little notice of the warrior who has arrived just as you’re leaving. While you’re off waiting for the cycle to finish, you find yourself delayed by something trivial and return a few minutes late. But – oh no – all the dryers are full and you realize that the person who came after you has taken your rightful spot through speed and precision. You’ve just been sniped.
Paratroopers
A tactic encountered largely in the Southwest towers, where laundry rooms of one washer and one dryer each are located on multiple floors. Finding the dryer on his or her floor in use, the impatient laundry warrior may take his or her wet clothes to the dryer on another floor. It’s possible to create a chain reaction in this manner, with numerous loads of laundry beginning on one floor and winding up somewhere else entirely. Like the poor sap at the bottom of Ponzi’s pyramid, however, someone’s always bound to lose out in the end.
Trench soldiers
Intrepid, desperate or some combination of the two? Every so often, you might come across one of the few and the proud, those who camp out in the hallway next to the laundry room. Some come equipped with a supply of reading or portable music. But don’t be fooled by that textbook they seem to be absorbed in, because really they’re watching you. All kidding aside, though, this strategy of devoting 45 minutes to making sure your clothes transition smoothly from washer to dryer does bear certain merits over running up and down five flights of stairs to check on the laundry room for the umpteenth time over the course of a day.
Laundry is dangerous business
Even isolated cases of “laundry rage” are not all that uncommon – chalk it up to more and more warriors cracking under the stress of battle. Believe me, an angry college student flinging damp boxer-briefs in a cramped room is a terrifying sight indeed. What can be done to stem the horrors of war in laundry facilities across the campus? Maybe we really do need more Lebensraum; after all, how can three washers and dryers (with one or more usually in some state of non-functionality) be enough for four floors full of residents? At the very least, simple things like dryers that actually dry clothes in a single cycle can have a great impact on keeping the peace. There’s one glimmer of hope, though: residence halls can pool their resources to get better machines. If the university met us just halfway, we may someday see an end to the struggle.
Until then, best of luck to you, my fellow laundry warriors, as we fight the good fight, the honorable fight, the fight for polka-dotted underwear and missing left socks.
