Living in a dorm with a public, shared laundry room can be tough. I know we’ve all probably seen someone’s clothes being moved or had it done to you. It’s so frustrating! Hopefully these simple “rules” or “standards” can relieve some of the stress that comes with the laundry process.
First and foremost, while it might seem to be overly simple, bring your own supplies! It seems very basic, but bringing your own material can ensure that you aren’t left scrambling for clean clothes. The most important supplies I’ve found are laundry detergent pods, liquid or powder and dryer sheets or balls. Pods and liquid are less sustainable than powder options, but they tend to smell better and are much more convenient when it comes to detergent. Wool dryer balls are another, once again, more sustainable substitute to dryer sheets, but the sheets do smell really nice and are very convenient. These supplies should leave you with bit less stress than you might have previously had.
The next recommendation I am able to offer is that of load size vs. time of day. When completing multiple loads of laundry back-to-back or at the same time, I would recommend doing laundry midday (if you don’t have class, of course) or late at night. Offsetting your laundry times from the other people on your floor or in your building makes the process a lot easier to go about, especially when you have a lot of laundry to do.
Additionally, I would recommend not leaving laundry baskets in the laundry room while you wait. This could lead to your basket being stolen or it being in the way of someone. Bringing it back to your room with you while your laundry is in the machine would probably be your safest option.
The fourth and arguably most important standard of the laundry room is always set timers that coincide with the machine timers on your phone. This is extremely important so that you can keep track of when your laundry should be done if you are preoccupied, and so you can go get it from the machine when it’s finished. This benefits others around you because the limited number of machines can be a difficult obstacle to work around when there are large groups of people doing laundry. This also benefits you because it makes the process of doing laundry a lot faster (due to there being no gaps between loads) and you can get other things done while waiting for your laundry in a stress-free way.
The next standard to be discussed is going to get your laundry as soon as you can when it’s finished. This is important because it makes your laundry process shorter, and it shows that you respect others who are also trying to get their laundry done. This rule of thumb is genuinely just basic courtesy. I would highly encourage this for anyone using a public laundry room.
While on the topic of getting your laundry as soon as possible, it’s also important to allow a grace period for others as it’s a very polite habit to keep. Now this doesn’t have to be extensive; giving people an extra 10 to 15 minutes could be considered appropriate. This allows people to get back to the building if they might have left, or it just allows them to come to a natural stopping point in any activity that they might have begun while waiting for their laundry. This allowance for others may very well ensure the same respect being given to you in the future. With this being said, if the amount of time that their laundry has been finished becomes extensive, needing to move that laundry out of the way would be understandable.
The final, and yet again quite simplistic standard is folding laundry in your room. This just makes it easier for everyone in the laundry room if you are out of the way (for lack of a better term). This also allows you to have some privacy if you don’t want everyone seeing all of your clothes and/or intimates. Lastly, folding your freshly cleaned clothes on a dirty folding table is counterintuitive.
I hope these tips and tricks might help any newcomers to a public laundry situation. Thanks for the read! :)