In the depths of Dirty Dom, there is a dark and humid laundry room. The laundry room’s eight washers and dryers serve all 247 students who call Dominic Hall home here at Saint Anselm College.

As you can imagine, this can be problematic at times.

Sometimes, you drag your hampers from the top floor down four flights of stairs only to find that every machine is in use.

I am fine with waiting for a machine to open up; however, what frustrates me is there are machines I should be able to use that I cannot.

People often leave their clothes unattended after they start their load of laundry. That’s fine, until they do not come back and take care of their laundry when the load is done. They just leave their clothes in the machine, meaning anyone who wants to use the machine has to wait until the person finally decides to take care of their clothes.

That, my fellow Anselmians, strikes at the heart of this piece. A common practice in Dominic Hall is to take a person’s clothes out of the machine and throw them on the floor. While I don’t participate in that practice, I do think people need to be more responsible when it comes to doing laundry.

Yes, I believe that people should not leave their clothes unattended when doing laundry.

Throwing someone’s unattended clothes on the floor might seem harsh, but people can be impatient, and laundry takes a long time.

There are 247 people living in Dominic Hall. An average load of laundry takes 1.5 hours to complete (30 minutes to wash and an hour to dry). Take the time it takes to wash one load of clothes (.5 hours) and multiply it by the number of people in Dominic Hall (247) and divide that by the number of washers (8) and you discover that it takes 15 and a half hours for everyone in Dominic Hall to just wash their clothes.

Doing some more math, you will see that it would take 31 hours in Dominic Hall for everyone to dry their clothes. That means that without including the time it takes to load your clothes into the machine, or the time it takes for you to swipe your card, it would take all of Dominic Hall two whole days to do their laundry.

Since we all have better things to do with our time, do you really think that people will wait for others to take care of their unattended clothes?

Why should a person take responsibility and look after their laundry instead of leaving it unattended? Well, there are several good reasons.

The first reason is wet clothes, if left in the machine for a while, begin to smell. That means the clothes you just paid $1.50 to wash will smell like you did not wash them at all. I often find that even when I do put my clothes in the dryer, it takes more than one dry cycle for my clothes to completely dry. If you are waiting for your laundry, you know that your clothes did not dry as quickly as you think and need more time. By noticing this right away, your clothes will not smell.  

The next reason why people should not leave their clothes unattended is waiting for your laundry is not that hard. In the hour and a half it takes to do laundry might I suggest you do your homework, play a game, or scroll through social media. Then, put your clothes in the dryer and go back to whatever you were doing.  

Finally, if you leave your clothes unattended, people will throw them on the floor, instead of waiting for you to take care of them.

Nobody wants their clothes thrown on the floor of Dirty Dom, but no one likes having to wait to do laundry either!

Next time you do laundry, please set a timer instead of wasting everyone else’s time. If you do not, do not be surprised to find you clothes on the ground, and the machine you were using occupied by someone else’s laundry.