So you're at college. It took a while, but you've finally learned how to juggle classes, sports, clubs, sleep, friends, phone calls home, homework, and feeding yourself at least daily. Until the morning when you wake up and realize that you have to go to class in your Shrek pajamas, because you have nothing else that's clean. And then you wail in anguish, because you are no longer a successful adult. You forgot to do laundry. This task is, indeed, the proverbial Straw that broke the College Student's back.
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But it's okay.
Just go to class--everyone loves Shrek--and when you come back, find the laundry room.
Where can I do laundry?
Every dorm has a laundry room (except Tyler House and one or two Dodd houses?). These are typically located in the basement or on the ground floor. In this author's liited experience, the machines work well when they are not out of order.
How do I pay for laundry?
To wash or dry a load costs a cool $1.25. You can feed nickels, dimes, and (the Holy Grail of college students) quarters into the machine--or you can put money on your ID card via the cash-to-card machine located in the back of Paresky (is there another one?), and use that instead.
How long does it take?
It takes 40 min to do a cold wash cycle and 60 min for a low dry cycle. Some people like to bring homework down to the laundry room while they wait. It is recommended that you set an alarm on your cell phone so that you can take your laundry out promptly, especially during peak laundry-doing time: evenings and weekends. It's common courtesy.
Other useful information
- Bring your own detergent. Know that if you leave it in the laundry room, other people will use it.
- Don't forget to clean the lint screen before you put your stuff in the dryer.
- Do laundry in the morning or early afternoon, when no one else is there. The earlier the better.
- Get a drying rack and save half of your laundry money. This works very well if you have a lot of synthetic, quick-dry sports clothing.
- Students who pay a small fee can have their clothes taken care of by the nearby Waterworks Laundry, which will even pick the laundry up from your dorm.
- Some clever person made a website where you could keep track of which machines were free when--unfortunately, this author can't find it.