Clothes lines

[mechtilde]

I found some posts by people asking if there were any laundromats around and every time there was someone saying that washing your laundry outside your home is elitist and snobby and the people asking should just buy cheap washing machines.

I find that absolutely fascinating!

Wierd- because in the UK you tend find them in the most economically deprived areas in the UK. Unless you can afford to get them to do it for you, getting your laundry done outside the house is time consuming and very inconvenient.

[magicdomino]

By contrast, my very middle-class suburban area has three laundromats within a couple of miles.  Two opened within the last couple of years.  There are a lot of apartments about a mile away from the newest one, so I suspect a lot of their business comes from there.  Perhaps the laundry rooms there are unsatisfactory in some way. And there are good reasons for homes with their own washers and dryers to use someone elses: broken machines, large items that won't fit in a standard washer, long hot power outages that make you sweat all over every pair of shorts that you own.     (I was going to do laundry on the weekend that the tree fell on the power lines.)

[dawbs]

I found some posts by people asking if there were any laundromats around and every time there was someone saying that washing your laundry outside your home is elitist and snobby and the people asking should just buy cheap washing machines.

I find that absolutely fascinating!

I'd imagine those people are thinking of dropping off your laundry and having it done, not of sitting in a laundromat doing one's own?

[hobish]

I found some posts by people asking if there were any laundromats around and every time there was someone saying that washing your laundry outside your home is elitist and snobby and the people asking should just buy cheap washing machines.

I find that absolutely fascinating!

I'd imagine those people are thinking of dropping off your laundry and having it done, not of sitting in a laundromat doing one's own?

That's what i'm thinking, too. I have never heard of the coin-op being anything close to snobbish. I have dropped my clothes off at the laundramat and had them washed for me a few times when i could afford it. I gotta say, i felt like quite the princess I loved it.

A few of my neighbors have those square antenna looking clothes lines, and growing up we had a loooong one - so long it needed poles to support it - in the back yard. I hated that thing. My mom was afraid of spiders so she never wanted to take the wash down, and i hated how my jeans would be all crunchy yet still damp around the waistband, and towels were like something you might use to sand a bench when they came off the line they were so stiff and rough and crunchy. I love having my very own dryer. My very own dryer that plays a little ditty when it is done, no less. Just thinking about that stupid pain in the rear clothesline makes me want to go hug my dryer 

[Venus193]

When I go to the laundromat I take a book or play with my cell phone.  My building doesn't permit people to have their own machines because of plumbing issues and most of the kitchens are too small to have adequate space for washing machines anyway.

As for whether this is elitist or snobbish, I doubt it.  It may even be ecologically sounder, but nobody was thinking about that the last time this building was rewired.

[greencat]

USA, Central Florida.  My mother will hang clothes out during the dry half of our year (what some of you folks probably call fall and winter).  During the other half of the year, it's either raining or so humid dry clothes absorb moisture from the air.  A lot of people in the area where I live are either living in apartments or rented places with structural way to set up a clothesline or in communities with deed restrictions that forbid clotheslines.

[Dindrane]

Re: laundromats

I think it depends upon where you live in more ways than one, as to whether they will be widely available or not. I'm sure some of it is related to socio-economics, though.

Where I used to live, I'd have been really surprised to find an apartment that didn't include its own washer and dryer (that was part of the apartment the same way the kitchen appliances were). Where I live now, I'm really surprised when I see places for rent that do include a washer and dryer in the actual residence. It's slightly less rare to find places that have a W/D hookup (so that you can provide the actual appliances), but even that is nothing like guaranteed.

Most of the places that do include a W/D here are either ridiculously expensive for the area, single-family detached houses for rent, or both.

So, obviously, laundromats are much more common here than they were in the previous city I lived in. Apartment complexes with coin-operated laundry rooms are also much more common.

I don't know what causes the difference, although the city I live in now is very much a college town, and the city I moved from very much was not. I count myself fortunate that I live in an apartment with both W/D hookups in each unit, and a conveniently-located coin-operated laundry room. Since the washer/dryer combo unit I have is not especially good at large loads, or at drying anything, it's nice to be able to use industrial-size dryers when we need to wash our towels (so that they will dry in some period of time less than 4-5 hours). But it's also nice that we don't have to schlepp all of our laundry to an outside facility (even if it is 20 feet from our front door).

[Ereine]

I think that laundromats are so uncommon here that people have no idea of how they operate. Some of them (according to an article I found on laundromats in Helsinki, about all maybe six of them) offer the drop in thing and fold your laundry and maybe iron it and the prices reflect that so it isn't really useful if you're poor. One load costs me about 1 euro in our laundry room and an average price for a laundromat seemed to be 3,5 euros, it can get very expensive if you do it all the time. Poorer people tend to live in apartments here (houses are very expensive and rarely rented) and I suspect that most apartment buildings have laundry rooms so the people who need laundromats are more likely to be wealthier (like people who are temporarily working in another town). I think that the elitist thing comes partly from the assumption that you just drop in your laundry and that is somehow morally wrong (I've seen that same argument used for paying someone to clean your home) and someone seemed to think that laundromats were just an American trend used by people who want to be different. But those were anonymous commenters online so of course there are crazy people among them

[Isometric]

(Australian)

We have both washer and dryer in our home. I'm not sure of the US term for what kind of house we live in, but it's only me DH there, on our own block of land, and we're not attached to anyone else's house. (Single family dwelling?)

Where ever humanly possible, we use the clothes line out the back. In Winter, it's a combo of clothesline (when not raining!), indoor clothes racks, and dryer.

Using the dryer makes me feel decandent and wasteful, if I can use the clothes line.

Re the sandpaper towels, that sometimes happens when they're on the line too long! The crunchy jeans soften with wear!

[katycoo]

I just did a gogle search in my area.

I live in a very residential suburb.  Mine and the surrounding residential suburbs do not have a laundromat.  The nearest is one suburb over, which has a lower socio-economic reputation, a proper commercial district, and more apartment blocks.  There are 4 there.  This would be about 10 minutes by car for me to get there.  Some are also dry cleaners.

Interestingly, most of the suburban suburbs with a shopping centre have a dry cleaners, but they don't do general laundry.

[Decimus]

My experience in NYC is that "laundromats" tend to cluster in mid- to low-income areas, but in higher-income areas dry cleaners will offer "drop-off" laundry services.  But even in high-income areas apartments will have a laundry room, not individual units, in part because the plumbing can't handle it.  A lot of the buildings can't handle dishwashers or garbage disposals either (at least without major retrofitting). 

My current building has a laundry room, but in a previous residence I had to use a laundromat.  I used the drop-off part, they charged 0.85 cents a lb, minimum 10 lbs.  It was extremely annoying, given I was in a 3-floor walk-up at the time.

There was no way a clothes line would have been practical, though.  The basement was extremely damp and was prone to flooding and there wouldn't have been enough space in the apartment even in the bathroom.

[Thipu1]

We may not have invested in a washer/dryer combo on our own.  Laundromats are very common.

However, the renovation of our building in the 1980s was partially sponsored by the local
gas company.  As a result, each apartment has its own gas-fired furnace and hot water heater.  The apartments also have a built in alcove for a washer/dryer stack.  Given the circumstances, it made sense to buy them.  Being able to come home and drop a load in the wash saves a lot of agita. 

[kherbert05]

Houston Texas
Laundromats - tend to be the you stay and move things around type. Generally located near or in low income areas especially with high apartment residency rates. From what the kids say - lots of my students are the ones to stay and watch the laundry while their parents do other work around the apartment or go to work on the weekends.


Dry Cleaners - Some also launder things. We would drop my Dad's shirts off at the cleaners to be washed/dried/lightly starched and press once a week. I was by there recently and was shocked to see it was still in business. (It is not part of a chain and fairly expensive place)

[Thipu1]

Same here in NYC.  Some dry cleaners offer laundry by the pound services.  Amost all offer washing and pressing services for items such as dress shirts. 

[squeakers]

Iowa: have washer, dryer and a clothesline.  I tend to use the line for towels/sheets/blankets and now and then for clothes. It's also great for hanging up the boat coats (life jackets).  During the winter I will hang some stuff in the furnace room (wood burner)... like a wet coat that would get destroyed in the dryer (I hate plastic zippers.)

On laundromats: none in my tiny town but next town over has one.  It has huge washers and driers.  A couple racks to hang things on.  It was kind of grimy though so the next time an appliance died I put my foot down and said  to DH "no, put it on a credit card!"

But the place that will always hold a fond memory for me is Duds and Suds: coin operated laundromat with a bar that serves beer and has a big screen tv.  You could also drop off laundry and have them washed/dried for you but we never did that.  We used the place when first the washer died and then 3 months later the dryer died. Had to wait a bit on buying a new drier from having just bought a new washer.  Those were the penny pinching days.