My friend, Nick, asked me this morning if I would like to have lunch together. I said sure but told him I had to do some laundry first. He said no problem, he had to take a shower then he’d head over and arrive by noon. Plenty of time I thought. The washer takes 27 minutes and the dryer 45 and it was only 10am. So I woke Ken up and told him the plan and ran the laundry down. I used the 3 giant washers, making sure they all started before leaving because sometimes they don’t.

Then I ran back upstairs and did some minor straightening up and getting ready stuff. When I went to switch the wash to the dryers I discovered that one of the washers was stuck in the spin cycle but wasn’t spinning. I pushed the stop button and waited for it to count down so I could open the doors, they are the front loading kind. Once it did I found that the clothes were all still soaking wet. UGh! I threw them all in a basket and wrang them out in the sink. Not fun at all, especially the jeans and t-shirts.

Then I split up the load into 2 dryers hoping they’d finish quickly. Ran upstairs, told Ken I was hopping in the shower and to answer when Nick called. Nick actually arrived a bit early while I was still in the shower so I quickly got dressed and waited for the dryer timer to go off. When it did, I started with the 2 normal loads and folded them while waiting for the last 2 half loads to finish. They weren’t quite done when I checked so I added some time and sat down with my iPhone, angry, frustrated and sticky. The laundry room is always hot, humid and they took the couches out and put a hard bench in.

After 20 minutes I checked on the dryers again. I pulled out some of the mostly dry stuff or stuff that could hang but one of the dryers wasn’t even turning on anymore! I tried to restart it 4 times but I ended up throwing that stuff in with the other half load and giving it another 20 minutes. By then it was 1pm and Ken and Nick were waiting on me to go to lunch and I was just sick of laundry so I just took it upstairs. I didn’t fold the socks so they could dry more though.

I don’t care if I get a dishwasher in our next place, I actually prefer doing it by hand after doing it that way for the last 8 years, but I must have a washer & dryer by the end of this year or I will go nuts.