Airing the Dirty

Raise your hand if you used to have to wash your own clothes. I’m not talking about dragging your little piles of socks and pants to your personal washing machine, I’m talking about scrubbing everything by hand. Or maybe you used to have to carry your wash to the laundry mat? Man, I used to hate that.

There was a wash house about 4 blocks from our apartment and even though it wasn’t a particularly long walk to the little house of washers, I detested the fact that I had to use one of those silver carts with two wheels that I’d only ever seen old ladies and the lady who collected dead cats use. Maybe I was a fool, but I was embarrassed, okay! I tried to avoid doing my laundry by buying more underwear and pairs of pants at Ross but that just made matters worse. See, that just meant that when I ran out of money I had even MORE clothes to wash. Eventually I had to break down and drag the funky garments to the laundry mat. Because I hated the rusty silver cart so much I found a huge computer box and decided I would put all my clothing in the cardboard container and use a moving dolly to transport the items to my destination. This proved to be quite useful and a lot easier to maneuver.

Every Sunday on my habitual trip to Wash n Spin my neighbors would see me and wonder what on earth I was doing with that computer box. They didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing but I know they were probably suspicious. When arriving at the wash house other patrons would look at me in wonder, trying to figure out why I was delivering a computer to a dusty room of washing machines.

It went on like this for a while until some crack head stole my dolly from behind the house. Wait, actually I think my mom sold it at a yard sale. That made me mad. We were always having yard sales and it surprised me that others would actually want to purchase our junk. So at this point I went on a strike and vowed to wash all of my clothes by hand. In order for the garments to dry I would hang them on the banister of the duplex porch, which was simple enough. Except sometimes clothes would go missing and I’d see them down the street at the local raccoon hang out. Little animals would run off with my t-shirts, creating little cotton homes in my Ross purchases.

Now that I’m in college and there is a laundry room in my building, my mother had the nerve to go buy a washer and dryer. Oh and she tells me that she has the best time washing all of her clothes, no more late nights at the local wash house. Although the little machine always seems to be on the fritz whenever I come home…