Laundry Woes

I've been behind on my laundry for a few days (okay, fine, weeks) now. I mean seriously behind. Like 9 or 10 loads behind. [I know that I am making my Susie Homemaker friends cringe in horror. Meredith...I need your laundry system!!] Anyway, all this being said....

My dryer decided to quit yesterday.

Nothing knocks the wind out of routine and ambitious plans like a much needed appliance kicking the bucket. So frustrating.

Lucky for me though, I have a handy dandy husband. So last night, in the midst of finishing up Halloween costumes, Kirk finds time to pry to back off of the dryer and assess the damage. Turns out it is totally fixable. Hooray! We got online and tracked down the part that we needed. Relatively cheap...another Hooray! Then we find out that it won't be here until Monday.

Monday? What? And I'm already 10 loads behind? No way.

This afternoon -- because I refuse to wait out the weekend walking knee deep in smelly socks and wet towels -- the boys and I headed to the LAUNDROMAT!

I was moderatly excited about the land of endless washers and dryers. I had a utopian view of this entire undertaking. I was envisioning walking into the building, loading up a long line of washers with all my articles, and then, just as efficiently, moving them to the waiting dryers that would dry my clothing in record speed. We would be washed, dried, folded, and on our way home in less than an hour. All of this while my children cooperated in angel-child fashion.

HA! What a joke!

Quite the opposite...

We walk into the building (which smelled like old socks and cheap bleach) and headed to the washers. There were only 5 or 6 working in the whole place...4 of which were already taken by an old lady doing her son's college laundry (I know because she told me, and because I figured the boxer shorts she kept holding up probably weren't hers). After loading a ridiculously small washer with a very small load of clothes, I had nothing else to do but wait. And wait, and wait, and wait...for the boxer lady to finish up, so I could use her washers. Seriously...is it that hard to keep the appliances in an appliance business up-and-running?

I got my first load of clothes into a dryer, and still envisioned a fast exit on that end of things. Surely a silver lining was in the picture somewhere. After boxer lady moved to the dryers, I started filling up those washers with my other clothes. Got those whirring away, and I was beginning to perk up. I could see my clothes just a-tumblin' in the dryer, and I knew that the loads in the washers would be out soon and I could do a big switch-er-oo. The dryer quit -- great anticipation of fluffy warm shirts and jammies turns into agonizing defeat. They were still soaking wet. I could have stayed home and had this much productivity. Gee Whiz. I stuff more coins in the slot, hoping and praying that it was just a freak thing and that the rest of the afternoon wouldn't pan out so horridly.

It did.

I ran out of quarters before washing all my loads because I had to keep stuffing quarters in the dryers. I think it took them about 4 complete cycles to dry a VERY small load of clothes. Madness. And even at that, I still brought home one full laundry basket of still-damp clothing that I had to hang up to air dry.

On top of spending 3 hours in the rat-hole, my kids were FAR from well-behaved. They screamed. They yelled. They ran circles around the washers. But, I let them. What else were they supposed to do for 3 hours? And I figured that there wasn't much they could really tear up in the joint anyway.

I haven't been to the laudnromat in about 10 or so years. Back in college, Kirk and I use to go there on little dates. We would giggle and laugh while we did our laundry together. So my memories of Washer Land have been really fun ones.

NOT ANYMORE!

Please, please, please, MR. DRYER-MAN, don't break again. Don't make me go back to that awful place....don't make me go! I had enough today to last me a lifetime!! :) One (and only one!) good note -- we all have clean clothes that should last us 'til Monday. Thank the Lord!