In communal laundry rooms, it's inevitable that you are going to try to do laundry at the same time as someone else, which means that there can be some confusing situations. In our building, we have one washer and dryer on almost every wing of every floor. We live right by the laundry room, but usually utilize that room, plus at least the ones above and below it. If we need to, we also use ones across on that wing. Never really sure if this is like laundry room monopoly, but it's easier to go six loads spread out than finding that many hours of free time. So this brings me to questions of etiquette, are we being rude to utilize other rooms for our laundry?
The next situation (a fairly regular occurrence) is the "why haven't they gotten their clothes out of the dryer yet?" situation. What is appropriate to handle this situation? Usually, we wait a little while to see if they get moved. If not, after about 15 minutes, I usually bring in my own laundry basket and take their clothes out. I do my best to place them nicely in the basket to avoid wrinkling and semi-fold the pants for the same reason. But at the same time, I don't want to take the time to fold all their laundry and it seems inappropriate in some way to fold their personal clothing. But I don't want to just shove it in the basket, even though they probably don't care about wrinkled clothes if they leave them in there for over an hour. I know that people sometimes just toss it onto the dryer (where it's usually dusty or covered in dried, sticky laundry detergent spills), or on the floor, but that is rude. However, I wonder if I am just as rude.
The next situation (a fairly regular occurrence) is the "why haven't they gotten their clothes out of the dryer yet?" situation. What is appropriate to handle this situation? Usually, we wait a little while to see if they get moved. If not, after about 15 minutes, I usually bring in my own laundry basket and take their clothes out. I do my best to place them nicely in the basket to avoid wrinkling and semi-fold the pants for the same reason. But at the same time, I don't want to take the time to fold all their laundry and it seems inappropriate in some way to fold their personal clothing. But I don't want to just shove it in the basket, even though they probably don't care about wrinkled clothes if they leave them in there for over an hour. I know that people sometimes just toss it onto the dryer (where it's usually dusty or covered in dried, sticky laundry detergent spills), or on the floor, but that is rude. However, I wonder if I am just as rude.
1 comment:
It's OK to take people's laundry out of the dryer if it's been a long time. Most definitely. If it's just sitting there and you need to use it - than I see nothing wrong with taking their laundry out. It's nice of you to semi-fold the pants too.
Not so sure about using every washing machine in your building at the same time, though. If you needed to do a quick load and found out that nearly every washing machine was being used at once, you might be alittle aggravated. I'd maybe use two at the same time.
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