This week, we visited a modern laundromat for obvious reasons. My experience in a laundromat was limited to college days when you sort of washed stuff in one load, dried it and left wondering why all your clothing was changing to the same color, usually pink or gray. On the road, my regimen is to drop Sharon off and head to a coffee shop to grab a couple of brews for us. Not this week as my planning and logistics manager insisted I stay the course and learn the intricacies of washing clothes in a commercial establishment. Uh……
To be successful in the RV business, you must have skills or training in sanitation management, electrical systems, water management, mechanics, carpentry, chemistry and mechanical engineering. You also need at least two rolls of Gorilla Tape, useful in most of the above noted regimens. In addition to my cartography skills (paper maps in Vietnam and artillery) I also agreed to sitting through basic laundry 101. My hat is off to whomever handles that responsibility in your compound. You need to master fabrics, soaps, bleaches, dryer sheets, fabric softeners, computers and financial planning. I will never take this responsibility lightly again!
Today’s commercial washers (costing between 5K and 16K EACH) will wash the hell out of your clothes. You pay for each load with an app on your phone. Each load costs between 6 and 15 dollars and is spun out in around 30 minutes. Dryer cycles run around a buck for 20 minutes. Extra time on a dryer can be bought by the minute for 1.25 but you’ll quickly see you are ahead buying another full cycle which requires moving to another dryer. Temperature control in all respects is a skill that requires lots of experience.
My concept of folding clothes did not meet Sharon’s standards. She thought I would do better just tossing stuff in a bag randomly. Believe me, I have it down now.
A thousand pardons to skilled laundry practitioners. I grossly underestimated the nuances of doing it correctly. The preservation of colors and the continued fit of clothing is far more complicated than what I remember on the back porch with my grandmother. We had a wringer washer, a tub for rinsing and a tub with some magic stuff called blueing. Our dryer was a wire between two posts and a gentle South Carolina breeze. Please take a moment to thank the scientist in your home who does the laundry. Times have changed…..
Have a great week!
SR
srj641 
Oh, but the clothes off the line smelled so fresh unlike today’s scented dryer sheets. My mother put the clothes
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