Our dryer is broken. So is our idea of what things cost, sometimes.

[kyrielle]

It thinks heat is optional. (Everything else works; I did all the troubleshooting I'm really capable of. Running it ten minutes produces cold damp clothes, not warm damp clothes. Venting is fine. Barrel is spinning. Just no heat.) So, they'll be out Wednesday to look at it. It is, of course, just outside of warranty. Urgh. So we'll see if I need a new one or if it's cheaper to fix. (The folks coming to service it don't sell them, so if they say I'm better replacing it, I'm gonna believe them.)

Discovered broken mid-last-week, we thus had a lot of laundry. I was working with wash-and-drip-dry, but this weekend had to admit we needed to involve a laundromat.

I have a ballpark figure in my head of what laundromats cost, and it's reasonably current given that I wash our king-sized comforter at one when it needs it.

So I grabbed three rolls of quarters, and indeed, a week of laundry for a family of four (actually, a bit less because I let some of the bedding I'd normally wash weekly wait another week) ran $28 in the end. It would have been $26 if I hadn't forgotten to bring my soap, though.

And this is where I point out that there's a meme going around Facebook about an awesome program allowing kids living in poverty to bring laundry to school, and how that causes them to _spend more time in school_, in part because they have clean clothes to wear and aren't embarrassed. I mention it because every time it appears, it seems like I see judgy comments about how their parents should try to do better. Because if you're living in poverty you almost certainly do not have a washer/dryer set in your residence.

So...if you're living in poverty and having trouble making ends meet / covering rent and food / etc., you can afford an extra $20 or so every week, right? Wait a minute...no. And that's ignoring whether or not you have access to a functioning laundry that's nearby. If you don't, you also have to haul the darned stuff to wherever you can wash it. Which is fairly easy for suburban ol' me with my reliable car and money for gas, but not for people living in poverty.

So, unless they're hand-washing in their sink and drip-drying, exactly how do the people saying these things expect people living with these limitations to solve this dilemma, and why do they think not solving it indicates they don't take good enough care of their children? (And sink-washing is a quick answer to toss off, but is a lot of hard work - at the end of a long day, is it work the parent is up to? Does it mean they get less sleep than they need, or trade off helping the kids with homework? And is there enough space to drip-dry everything that was used and cleaned?)

I am, personally, so glad that program exists. If you haven't seen the articles before, one is: http://www.businessinsider.com/washing-machines-solve-schools-big-problem-2016-8

...and here's hoping I don't need a laundromat solution again next weekend, but I'm still glad I _can_ do it, if I need to.

Comments

[conuly]

Our dryer broke. We used to have a clothesline, but that tree came down over a decade ago. (I want to put up a pole. My mother says leaning out the kitchen window is terrifying.) Dryers are expensive, so we've been drying them on racks in the attic - but if it's particularly humid out, or if we're in a rush, I haul that load down to the laundromat and use their driers. 75 cents for 21 minutes usually covers it, whew... but they don't let you do this on weekends, probably because most of the neighborhood has a washer but no dryer and they're wise to our schemes. (Most of the neighborhood seems to just drape their stuff out the windows and over porch rails, which means they must be doing laundry every single day if they don't haul it to the laundromat.)

If our washer goes, we're going to have to seriously tighten our belts to get a new one, because you're right, we can't afford to pay to wash at the laundromat where it's a minimum of $4 for a small load. We're lucky to have belts to tighten! We're over the median income for our neighborhood, but somehow our budget is always a bit tight. I don't know how all our neighbors do it, honestly.

(One of the donorschoose projects for our zoned middle school is for clothes to be kept in school so that kids who don't have clean clothes can be given something to wear. How sad is that?)

[kyrielle]

*nodnods* Yeah. Also, maybe the program mentioned in the article I linked is something your school could reach out to them about?

And yeah, the laundromat I go to - which, because I'm in suburbia, isn't even in the same _town_ I am, there isn't one here - won't let you dry unless you washed there, any day. (Of course, if they're not paying attention, you probably could get away with it.)

[conuly]

We have so many laundromats in our area, it's not even funny. It'd probably be a bigger boost to the local economy if they could be convinced to give out gift cards and we could donate those cards and detergent to the local pantries (and schools). Less publicity for Whirlpool or Maytag or whoever, though.