Laundry
room etiquette, competence needed
Jennifer
Frehn
It
appears some members of society were
not equipped with what I call laundry
room etiquette.
If you have ever had to use a general laundry room on campus, or anywhere else,
no doubt you have run into minor or major annoyances. These annoyances could
be easily avoided if everyone followed certain common courtesy guidelines.
First, to the people who leave their clothes in too long then scowl when they
find someone has removed them: Are you kidding me?
You knew when the clothes
would be done. It’s not like you were surprised it took 28 minutes for
them to wash or 46 minutes for them to dry.
The time is clearly labeled. So get your act together and stop causing clothing
congestion. Other people need to use the machines, especially during rush hour,
so be on time. If not, know your clothes will be removed.
Along those same lines, to the people who linger around the dryer and fold
their clothes piece by piece while those with dripping clothes stand by: This
I find especially selfish.
If you are alone in the room, and no one is waiting to use the dryers, then
fine, fold away. But if there is someone waiting with a sack of soaking attire,
put your clothes in your basket and fold them elsewhere. Your time is up, and
it is someone else’s turn.
Now we move on to the cardinal sin of the laundry room: When people open dryers
to check if they are in use, and don’t reset the buttons. This leads
to an unsuspecting person returning to find their clothes still wet and the
time up.
If I had a quarter for every time this happened to me, it would probably
take care of my laundry for the rest of the semester.
So before you open the dryer without checking the settings, stop and look.
Remember the setting, open the dryer, and if it contains clothes, press the
setting button again. It is not that difficult.
On the other side of the issue are the people who take clothes out of the washer
or dryer. While it is completely acceptable to do this if someone is not there
on time, there is an appropriate manner and way in which to approach the situation.
Yes, the person’s clothes deserve to be taken out, but no, they don’t
deserve to be strewn across the floor as if they jumped out of the washer themselves.
Make sure you place the clothes on a surface where they won’t fall on
the ground and get dirty or stepped on.
The next time you think about acting lazy or incompetent when doing laundry,
think again. There is such a thing as laundry room karma, and if you don’t
watch out, you may one day find yourself a karma victim.
Jennifer Frehn is a senior journalism major and the news editor of the
Daily Forty-Niner.
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