#driers

Clean X-press by Dan Gildor

Via Flickr

I admit, this is a kind of domestic history that’s much like our experience with cars and maintenance and breaking down and getting towed and sometimes being with one car and sometimes almost being with no cars. There’s a necessary domestic part of being married—logistics, if you will—that own pieces of our Happily Ever After.

So yeah.

After cars, the next big one is, believe it or not... laundry.

Definitely not part of our marriage counseling packet way back at the beginning.

When we were newlyweds, we lived in a condo in Lake City. None of the units had washer/dryer sets, so there was a laundry room on the bottom floor with a multitude of washers and dryers. Each one coin operated.

Meaning... that if it cost two dollars to do one load of laundry...

We’d be needing eight quarters in hand.

So having actual change, quarters specifically, used to be a requirement for doing laundry. Because of that, stuff would come up like if it's the end of the day and the laundry had to be done... but we didn't have quarters... that laundry's not getting done until we first went out and got quarters which, at the time, for us required a trip to the ATM for a twenty and then the grocery store to for the change.

If we were feeling lucky, we’d scrounge the condo for loose quarters.

Most of the time, though, what happened was we’d wait 'til the weekend when we could just go into our local bank branch and take care of everything at the counter.

Laundry logistics.

It was part of our every week.

Then we moved up to an apartment with a stacked washer/dryer right there in the apartment. And that was the...

BEST.

It was the most convenient set-up we ever had even to this day. For washing, drying, and for folding.

Later we bought a house and, among other things, a washer/dryer set.

For some reason, it was never as convenient as in the apartment. Part of the reason for that was the washer and dryer had their own room in the house... but it was kind of cramped in there. Plus, moving dried clothes to any other room was actually more of a hassle as it turned out.

The big thing, though, was eventually the washer and dryer died. We took one or the other to a local shop... but the best thing was to trade them in for a used but restored pair that worked for awhile until they didn't. At which point we started hauling everything to the local laundromat where it was all about quarters again.

Go figure.

Fortunately, times had changed and we could get cash against our debit cards at the laundromat where they also had a change machine.

So there's that.

At some point the laundromat's ownership changed hands and they were doing more corporate work so a lot of the time there weren't enough machines for us to use... and either we'd have to leave and come back later... or we'd fill the available machines and, when they were done, fill ‘em up again. Which made everything take longer.

Logistics.

Fortunately, Kimmer found another laundromat. It was farther away but always had enough machines available.

So that was really helpful.

Then one day we're at Habitat for Humanity where they have this great super efficient Scandinavian designed washer/dryer set that worked great until the washer door seized in the locked position and we couldn't use it anymore.

So back to the laundromat we went.

And then we were at Habitat again where they had this even bigger, even more modern, set that we bought for a steal, brought them right home, set 'em both in place...

Only to find out the washer power chord was four prongs whilst the wall outlet only had three... or vice versa. Something like that.

So we just kept going to our laundromat. 

Eventually we moved into another apartment with no washer/dryer set but with a laundry room one floor down. It's actually more convient all around than I would've guessed. Plus... no quarters necessary.

It's all credit cards anymore. You swipe, select settings, hit start, and there you go.

Which brings me to today.

Because today I put the clothes in three washing machines, swiped, set, and started the first... but when I swiped the second I got a No Connection message. Tried it again. Still...

No Connection.

So I tried firing up the third machine... same outcome. Tried it again.

Nope.

Then I started bouncing between washing machines, swiping away in the hopes my relentless perserverance would prevail. Then I moved the clothes from the third machine into a fourth machine, swiped, selected settings, and

Yeah.

I was maybe on my third try on this last machine when a woman came in, loaded up the remaining washer, swiped her card and ran into the same problem as I.

We comiserated a moment before she tried again to no avail but then identified a box plugged into the wall above that seemed related to the washers.

So she unplugged it. Beat. Beat. Beat. Then re-plugged it. Beat. Beat. Beat.

Ran her card and was off to the races.

Wow.

She basically reset the modem or router that allows the card readers to communicate with the mothership.

Definitely...

We’ve come a loooooooong way from scrounging for loose quarters in our condo.