Laundry is not that hard ... right?

Photo courtesy of Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Laundry is one of the unfortunate constants of life, up there with death and taxes. Would I rather be doing anything else than washing and folding my clothes? Sure. Do I do it anyway? Absolutely. However, the most aggravating part of doing laundry in a shared space is not the laundry itself, but the other people who make a simple task infinitely more difficult.

Laundry can be aggravating when you’d rather spend time on other things, but it is certainly not difficult. Everyone on Hofstra University’s campus is a young adult learning how to do young adult things, and sure, if Mommy and Daddy did your laundry for you up until now, it can be hard to pick up the slack. So, while I can forgive a rough start at the beginning of a semester, I cannot forgive when that rough start becomes a trend that litters the whole semester with issues. Laundry could be so simple and quick, even in a shared living space, provided everyone knows what they’re doing. Unfortunately, many people don’t.

There are people who leave their laundry unclaimed for hours after the end of its cycle, use more than two machines at once and wash their shoes in the machines, among many other annoying habits. Although these offenses aren’t particularly heinous, anything that puts a wrench in the shared process can still be frustrating.

 There aren’t many feelings more aggravating than going to your residence hall’s laundry room only to see finished machines with clothes still sitting in them. You’re pursuing a degree, but you can’t set a timer?

Laundry is made even more difficult by Hofstra’s poor upkeep of the machines. Dryers function poorly, washing machines leak and even when CSC ServiceWorks does fix something, it doesn’t stay fixed for long. Even a single machine being out of order, in conjunction with everything mentioned above, can make laundry a greater nightmare than it already is. 

In fact, during the spring semester of 2023, residents of Rensselaer House in the Netherlands had no functioning dryers for weeks, and they were not fixed until after move-out. Estabrook residents experienced a similar issue regarding broken laundry machines during that same semester. 

More recently, in Vander Poel Hall, one of the washing machines, though functional, could not be changed off warm temp. and perm. press. Regardless of the number of maintenance requests made, the washer went unfixed for the entirety of the semester.

I’m not the only person who feels frustrated with Hofstra’s laundry situation. Seriously, just search “laundry” on Fizz and doomscroll to your heart’s content. There are posts with hundreds of upvotes complaining about people’s inability to set timers, threatening to remove finished loads from machines and a picture of piles of unclaimed clothes strewn about Enterprise Hall’s laundry room from last semester that makes me shudder. Despite the coverage that laundry room horror stories get on Fizz, the most deranged ones often don’t appear on the platform and are so much worse than anything that does.

Last semester, an RA in Colonial Square told me that the residents of one of the houses were having what can only be described as a laundry war. People would let their clothes sit in machines for hours without taking them out, use every machine for load after load and fight in the house GroupMe daily. 

This saga came to a head when, after a resident moved their laundry from a washing machine to a dryer, they messaged their RA and asked them to take the laundry out of the dryer when it was done because the resident was going to bed. 

To me, this is the peak of insensitivity. It’s already awful to intentionally fall asleep with laundry in the machines and expect everyone else in the hall to wait for you to wake up and take it out, but it is doubly awful to do that and ask someone else to take it out for you. 

Those living in your hall, including your RAs, are not there to wait on you and are not responsible for your inability to do your own laundry. Stay awake, don’t use more than two machines at one time and above all, set a timer – or else someone, maybe even me, will be taking your clothes out for you.