Laundry
I've been going to the same laundromat since 1992. It's been going downhill for quite a while now and I'm pretty sure that I've talked about the homeless people having sex on the folding tables, smoking in the building, sitting on the tables while drinking beer out of a paper bag, all this while the owner shuffles through and does absolutely nothing. When we put clothes in the dryers we know which dryers not to use, because some of them have welded patchwork in them that have torn up our clothes, towels, linens, etc. The last couple years it has gotten even worse though. For our wedding, we bought new black Levis and black dress shirts, with my chemical sensitivities, we always have to wash clothes before I can wear them. Our brand new wedding clothes came out of the laundry with huge white streaky stuff all over them and we had to pay to take them to a launderer to get them recleaned.
You are probably saying to yourself, why don't those dumbasses use another laundromat?! We have tried. We went to the one a few blocks down the street from us on Church Street. It is a block away from Dolores Park and was more of a drug dealer's hangout than a laundromat. The place on 14th Street behind the old Home restaurant has more broken washers & dryers than machines that actually work, and is a homeless hangout, without any manager on duty or even checking in periodically. In other words....we are screwed!
We have been talking about it for years now, about getting a washer & dryer set for the apartment. The difficult thing about that is, the electrical and the water hookups. We would have to pay out of our pockets for the upgrades in a victorian building that needs a lot of help. 1) We don't have that kind of money. 2) It is not our property to be investing that kind of money in. Well, about 6 months ago, the neighbor that shares our landing, had a great big old box delivered. It said on the outside that it was a washing machine. But...it wasn't big enough to hold a washing machine! Hmmmmm... A week or so later we asked her about it and she showed it to us. It was an apartment size washing machine. It doesn't wash as much clothes as a standard washer does, about 2/3 of a standard washer's load. You hook it to a faucet and it plugs into a standard outlet. She also had a dryer that plugs into a standard outlet. We of course, had to investigate.
We found some online, and I was reading reviews of them. I bookmarked a couple of them so I wouldn't forget which ones they were. The next step was where to come up with the money. Both of our parents send us money for our b-days this year and I held onto as much as I could. Then I saw that they were on a special sale price at Walmart, so BAM! I ordered them. The order said that it would take a few weeks for delivery. OK, I can live with that. Guess what!? The dryer was delivered the next morning, and the washer 2 days later! Next step... where to put them.
It took us almost a month to get them set up. The whole dryer vent thing, and the only faucet hookup (and where the washer would fit) is in the kitchen. Rich did a trip to our laundromat from hell last week, and that was the final straw. I went last Friday to the hardware store and found a dryer vent attachment for people living in an apartment!!! Then reading directions and hooking everything up. When Rich got home from work, I surprised him and we washed our first load of clothes together, in our new washer.
The directions in the manual aren't very clear, so it was just kind of make it up as you go. I spent Saturday doing laundry as I cleaned and did paperwork. The dryer takes about 2 hours to dry, because it is only plugged into a standard outlet, it doesn't have a huge power source. And because of the wiring in our building, you can only have one appliance on at a time to avoid blowing a fuse. As I was washing on Saturday, I was looking at the brown water that was being rinsed down the sink drain. We aren't dirty people, we shower everyday, and change clothes everyday, how could there possibly be that much dirt, filth & slime in the rinse water??? As I washed more loads, I realized that our clothes have never been clean after washing them at our laundromat. Last night Rich was rewashing all the underwear and towels that he had just washed last Thursday at the HellHole. The rinse water was brown sludge!! These were clothes that had just been washed! Not even worn! Kind of disgusting.
After seeing this, Rich & I talked about it. I have been having skin issues for years, but the past year it has become increasingly worse, to the point that I am going to a dermatologist every 2 weeks, have been on antibiotics for months, prescription ointments, lotions, scrubs, etc to try and get my skin better. It hasn't been working. Now we think that the laundry has been the problem. So I took clean linens out of the linen closet and threw them in the washing machine today. Here is a picture of the rinse water.
This is what washed out of our "clean" linens, this is just a small part of it and you really can't get a clear image of just how dirty this water is. We are planning on washing literally every item of clothing in the house now, whether it is "clean" or not. I am almost certain than this is going to help both of us with our skin problems. Here's hoping!
You are probably saying to yourself, why don't those dumbasses use another laundromat?! We have tried. We went to the one a few blocks down the street from us on Church Street. It is a block away from Dolores Park and was more of a drug dealer's hangout than a laundromat. The place on 14th Street behind the old Home restaurant has more broken washers & dryers than machines that actually work, and is a homeless hangout, without any manager on duty or even checking in periodically. In other words....we are screwed!
We have been talking about it for years now, about getting a washer & dryer set for the apartment. The difficult thing about that is, the electrical and the water hookups. We would have to pay out of our pockets for the upgrades in a victorian building that needs a lot of help. 1) We don't have that kind of money. 2) It is not our property to be investing that kind of money in. Well, about 6 months ago, the neighbor that shares our landing, had a great big old box delivered. It said on the outside that it was a washing machine. But...it wasn't big enough to hold a washing machine! Hmmmmm... A week or so later we asked her about it and she showed it to us. It was an apartment size washing machine. It doesn't wash as much clothes as a standard washer does, about 2/3 of a standard washer's load. You hook it to a faucet and it plugs into a standard outlet. She also had a dryer that plugs into a standard outlet. We of course, had to investigate.
We found some online, and I was reading reviews of them. I bookmarked a couple of them so I wouldn't forget which ones they were. The next step was where to come up with the money. Both of our parents send us money for our b-days this year and I held onto as much as I could. Then I saw that they were on a special sale price at Walmart, so BAM! I ordered them. The order said that it would take a few weeks for delivery. OK, I can live with that. Guess what!? The dryer was delivered the next morning, and the washer 2 days later! Next step... where to put them.
It took us almost a month to get them set up. The whole dryer vent thing, and the only faucet hookup (and where the washer would fit) is in the kitchen. Rich did a trip to our laundromat from hell last week, and that was the final straw. I went last Friday to the hardware store and found a dryer vent attachment for people living in an apartment!!! Then reading directions and hooking everything up. When Rich got home from work, I surprised him and we washed our first load of clothes together, in our new washer.
The directions in the manual aren't very clear, so it was just kind of make it up as you go. I spent Saturday doing laundry as I cleaned and did paperwork. The dryer takes about 2 hours to dry, because it is only plugged into a standard outlet, it doesn't have a huge power source. And because of the wiring in our building, you can only have one appliance on at a time to avoid blowing a fuse. As I was washing on Saturday, I was looking at the brown water that was being rinsed down the sink drain. We aren't dirty people, we shower everyday, and change clothes everyday, how could there possibly be that much dirt, filth & slime in the rinse water??? As I washed more loads, I realized that our clothes have never been clean after washing them at our laundromat. Last night Rich was rewashing all the underwear and towels that he had just washed last Thursday at the HellHole. The rinse water was brown sludge!! These were clothes that had just been washed! Not even worn! Kind of disgusting.
After seeing this, Rich & I talked about it. I have been having skin issues for years, but the past year it has become increasingly worse, to the point that I am going to a dermatologist every 2 weeks, have been on antibiotics for months, prescription ointments, lotions, scrubs, etc to try and get my skin better. It hasn't been working. Now we think that the laundry has been the problem. So I took clean linens out of the linen closet and threw them in the washing machine today. Here is a picture of the rinse water.
This is what washed out of our "clean" linens, this is just a small part of it and you really can't get a clear image of just how dirty this water is. We are planning on washing literally every item of clothing in the house now, whether it is "clean" or not. I am almost certain than this is going to help both of us with our skin problems. Here's hoping!