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how should/could laundry work? (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Under communism, how do we clean our clothes?

It's not really efficient for every housing unit to have its own washing machine let alone dryer
- some people can dry clothes on lines but some can't
Washing clothes by hand sucks
Laundromats suck
Industrialized clothes washing? I have no direct experience with this

And it needs so much water.

To my mind laundry is one of the most intractable issues.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Laundromats are fine, but actually, I could imagine there being a launderer that collects bins of laundry at a municipal level like they already do for garbage (and recycling and compost in some places!)

The laundry collector can be a community hero much like the garbage collector, with good compensation for their time doing a dirty and socially necessary job.

EDIT Oh someone already said that. Well. I agree!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Laundromats are fine

What's your experience? I've been washing my clothes mostly always in laundromats for 20+ years. They are not fine.

You need to spend so much time either hanging around or going back n forth. Every week I spend 1-3 hours of time that I wouldn't have if I had an in-unit washer/dryer.
Lots of maintenance/equipment problems
Uneven availability of machines

you can show up and have to wait around because someone else came and filled every single machine at once

Problems like the last person used bleach and it didn't rinse properly so now there's just bleach and your clothes get ruined
machines are really limited in their settings, don't allow the freedom to add things at different parts of the wash, let is soak for a bit, or other things you can do with a normal domestic unit
people are always there with all their bed bug stuff

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Some places in the US have what are called "wash and folds" where your drop off your laundry and they'll do it for you, usually charging by the pound. You pick it up folded.

Even some dry cleaners will do this.

Obviously more expensive than a laundromat, but, as always, it's a question of how much you value your time.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was eyeing a wash n fold for a while but then I moved and now there isn't one anywhere close. I was procrastinating the whole thing because it felt too.. lazy. But holy fuck I hate the laundromat.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Laundromats suck. No argument here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I'm in a rural area so the traffic to laundromats is pretty low; my experience probably doesn't match the typical one! The machines all worked, there were rarely more that one or two people, etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah, the time lost to laundry in of itself is a pain. I could bring a book, but I still gotta carve out a block of time to do me and someone else's laundry. I gotta do it often as well, since I got a messy job and not a lot of clothes. I mean, I got a lot of clothes but it's hard to find the time to break out my sewing kit and fix up some of my pants.