100+ dorm residents with only four washing machines and four dryers are the perfect ingredients for a very long, time- and patience-consuming queue I have to endure during my stay in The Hague.
To avoid such thing, the rule of thumb is never doing laundry in weekend, the time of choice for most of us (but not mine), except when people (but me) are on holiday or fieldwork. It’s also better to do laundry late at night or early in the morning — as I’m not a morning person, midnight is always my choice.
Without queuing, it takes more than two hours to do each laundry cycle: 50 minutes to wash, 20 minutes to go back and forth to the machines, 60 minutes to dry, 15 minutes to fold fresh clothes. One annoying thing is that the machines are located in the dorm building across my rooms. It means that I have to go down two storeys, cross the street, unlock the door to the common room, put clothes in the washing machine, cross the street, unlock my dorm building door, go up two storeys, unlock my corridor door, unlock my room door, do something in my room for 30 minutes, go down again, cross the street, unlock the common room door, move clothes to dryer and take some shrink-prone clothes in my bag, cross the street, unlock my dorm building door, go up two storeys, unlock my corridor door, unlock my room door, do something in my room for 40 minutes, go down again, cross the street, unlock the common room door, get dry clothes, fold them, cross the street, unlock my dorm building door, go up two storeys, unlock my corridor door, unlock my room door, and finally put the fresh clothes inside my wardrobe. I appreciate the much-needed exercise, but it’s not fun in cold, windy time, and it’s even worse in winter.
Anyway, as now my two laundry bags are already full to the top, I really have to laundry the dirty clothes now… *sigh* Wish me a non-queuing night, fellas!
Picture is taken from this page.
Leave a Reply