My Beautiful Laundrette...

My Beautiful Laundrette is the title of an artsy film from the 80's.  The last time that I recall being at a laundromat was sometime in the 80's.   Today, I took all 100 pounds of the camp trunks to a laundromat.  It was not beautiful or artsy.

I left my house at 6:20 a.m. I was awake anyway and if I remembered correctly, laundromats are not air-conditioned, even in steamy Florida.

As I pulled into the open-air place in a decent-ish neighborhood,  I was immediately accosted by a strung out old lady asking if I wanted to buy a plastic flower.  I told her that I needed all my quarters for the laundry. As it turns out, this was not a lie.


I dragged in the four camp trunks and a bottle of this. Tide should re-name it Tide anti-stinky.

The laundromat was open 24 hours and there was no attendant. There were three men doing laundry and they all looked like pedophiles to me but pretty much ignored me. Perhaps it was because it looked like I was dragging four body bags into the place. It was an open air place and right on a major street (US 1) so I not really nervous. Had there been an attendant, I would have seen if I could just drop off and pay to have her do it , but no such luck.

There were five huge washing machines. I started to load up all of the smelly stuff into them when I noticed that it was $5.00 a load! Whoa!!! The last time I did coin laundry, my roommate and I split a roll of quarters and still had enough left over for a game of quarters. I did not have enough cash to complete the whole job!

The laundromat did not have an ATM so I huffed it across the street to Dunkin Donuts. The nice ladies there advised that they had plenty of white sugar demons but no ATM and I'd have to head a block away to the McDonald for more cash!

As I walked down US 1, I truly hoped that no one I knew saw me. I'm sure it appeared that I was looking to buy drugs.  Luckily McDonalds had an ATM and I withdrew cash and headed back to my beautiful launderette named Swifty

As the sun came up, I not only filled up five jumbo washing machines but two extra large ones for a total of 7. Here's the view from my folding table. I was wondering why no one else grabbed this spot but the sun started to blind me as it rose.

Then came the fun part, the drying.  The machines at Swifty take one quarter at a time. This buys you about five minutes.   I loaded up ten of the dryers and then had to stand them and keep putting in quarters as each one stopped.   I think that the other patrons there at that early morning were giving me the stink eye for taking up so many dryers.  Is there some type of laundromat etiquette? I hope not but I doubt that I'm ever going back so I really don't care. I wanted to get this dirty job over with as fast as possible.

At 7:30, a helper got dropped off by his father after a bribe of a dunkin donut and a little cash was accepted. He helped by putting quarter after quarter in the dryers that I was hogging and with the heavy lifting of the ikea bags of clean laundry into my car. You know that I love my ikea bags!

By 8:30 a.m., all of the camp clothes and trunks were washed, dryed, folded and on the way home.  

While the laundromat was a little bit creepy, this was a brilliant idea. I would have been doing the stinky laundry at home for days and days.  

By the way, I always use fragrance free detergent. My favorite is All Clear, however, the Tide Sport with Febreeze was a rock star for this tough job.  I can't believe how clean and fragrant the clothing is. I'd highly recommend it for a dirty job.  (This is an un-paid, un-solicited opinion/review)