My laundry soloution

I've posted before about my London laundry dilemma. I can never seem to stay on top of the laundry situation. There's always piles of it in my room and in the utility closet. The drying rack is always up in the lounge. Sad crunchy socks dangling on the rack or over the radiator. Despite being a free spirit, I need to have some order in my life. I can't stand to have laundry drying all over the place.

Yesterday I decided to take the whole lot of it over to the laundrette. I live right around the corner from a decent little laundrette and there's a coffee shop up that same road where I can have a coffee while I wait. I will admit that I don't walk down to this laundrette despite it being so close. I drive there. It's not even a block away, but I drive. There's always a place to park in front. So I do it. I washed two loads at 3 pounds a wash and it dawned on me that I could just wash the clothes at home in my machine and zip down there and toss them in the dryer.

The dryer is only 1 pound for 20 minutes and that is usually enough time to dry the load. I went home washed a load in the machine on the quick wash and then drove down and threw it in the dryer. 20 minutes later I was back at home folding my hot dry clothes and then immediately putting them away. I've still got to get my hands on some strong smelling dryer sheets. I had some store brand ones and they didn't do much. The clothes ended up smelling like hot metal. Not the best smell in the world, but it does fade once the clothes get dry.

Before the genius plan of mine, doing a load meant washing it and hanging it. Drying could take up to two days depending on the clothes. Also, there were times when someone forgot to take the clothes out and hang them up immediately because they didn't want to get up during EastEnders. They would get forgotten in the machine and start to stink, so they would have to be washed again. It's hard to place blame in a situation like that, since there are no commercials during EastEnders, cheers BBC!

Yesterday I managed to wash six loads! Like most people in London I carry my laundry around in the nice big blue Ikea bags. They are really handy bags. I don't know if they have them in States, but they should. Matthew pointed out to me that if I was English I would have walked the block to the laundrette with the heavy wet bag of laundry. Oh well, I wash the clothes so I do it my American way. At least now he has a drawer full of clean pants and socks.