Laundry Facilities

I would like to add to the list of things I miss my second hand washer and dryer.  This may seem like a relatively small thing.  But trust me, they are sorely  missed.

For doing laundry at camp I have three options.  The first is a free laundry service where you take in your clothes and they send them offsite to be washed, folded and then returned to you.  The problem with this is that one, I like instant gratification and don't want to wait the day or two it may take to get my clothes back.  Two, ocassionally items are not returned to you in the condition they are sent in or not returned at all.  Three, I feel weird having some stranger handling my "personal" items, especially if I want them washed a specific way.

The second option is the laundry facility, there are two on base.  However, there are so many people on base who want to use them it is a struggle to actually find open washers. When you do see there are open wash, you sing Hallalluah, run back to your room grab your laundry bags, and run back to the laundry facility in hopes that no one else got there before you and put their clothes in the washers.  You then have to wait for the wash cycle to run, generally it is double the length of time that is indicated on the washer, followed by atleast an hour in the dryer.  Nothing you wash will be returned to you with out additional "stuff" on them, random stains will certain appear in places they were not before they were put in the washer and ocassionally you will find someone elses socks mixed in with yours as they didn't get removed from the washer before your clothes were put in there.

The third option is the shower.  By that I mean wash your goodies by hand in the shower stall, ring them out and let them air dry in your room for a few days.  You do this for anything you do not want ruined or you do not trust in the washer.  I dont mind doing it, but things usually take atleast two days to dry...so a pain in the butt!

And of course I have my favorite laundry story.  So I have two bags that I fill with clothes to take to the laundry facilities.  I get there and I wash them, come back 30-40 minutes later and put them in the dryer, and again after another hour I pull them out of the dryers.  I generally just shove everything back into the laundry bags and bring them back to my room to fold so I can put them away.  Well right before I went to pull the clothes out of the dryer it started raining pretty hard, so there were a few puddles here and there.  As I was running back to my room from the laundry shack my one bag of "whites" just happend to hit the ground in the middle of a mud puddle, so my freshly washed and clean white clothes were now muddy brown.  I proceeded to return to my room and did my best to shower wash them and let them hang dry.  Unfortunately, its hard to get muddy brown off of white in the shower...