Quarters into the slot

I have always loved laundrymats... there is something very cathartic in gathering up all my dirty laundry, taking it out of my space and making order out of the mess, then bringing it back home to be put away neatly...


When we moved to main street Mendham we found out that the old colonial home's steep narrow basement steps wouldn't allow us to put in a washer and dryer... the previous owners had built a deck over the exterior entrance to the basement, my mum didn't seem to mind... we would just go to the laundrymat downtown...


It became a welcome ritual for us, we would go probably two to three times a week! I would bring my homework when I felt the need, or I would leaf thru the countless fashion magazines that were usually a year old and listen to the clothes clank in the dryers.... Mendham's little laundrymat didn't get much traffic, as it's such an affluent town... people would drop their clothes off to be laundered and then come pick them up, so the place was usually empty sans the crazy european woman who owned the place... I have yet to find a laundry mat with the same calm...


My mum and Jake would go down to the coffe shop and have dinner at least one night a week while we did laundry... sometimes we would go right after school and I would walk from Mendham highschool over to the shopping centre with friends, the highschool lot was always at the coffee shop or the sandwhich shop ordering half and halfs (half iced tea- half lemonade that this one place claimed to have invented)... it just seemed so much more productive and social and calming to take care of buisiness down town... I loved that the crazy little european lady knew us well and enjoyed having us around... years later, at the beginning of this semester... I gathered up all my dirty laundry, grabbed a magazine and some quarters and drove in the opposite direction of Madison's big and buisy laundromat and went to Mendham... the only thing I accomplished that day was my laundry and a cup of coffee from the coffee shop, but I came back to my dorm feeling accomplished, organized and somehow mentally in order...


Today I didn't have the luxury of time to kill, so I brought my reaserch with me and got a lot done while I sat in the Laundry mat and read my books... there were lots of people there today, one girl was reading articles standing up, hovering over her laundry- doing practically the same thing as me... there was a chinese couple folding their laundry and speaking together in chinese, there were countless middle aged bachelors that came in with one load and left with it un-folded, thrown into big sacks... and then there was me, the silly college girl who enjoyed every minute of folding my dirty laundry, making sense of the physical world, sorting all these possesions I have that often seem to posses me... I came back to the dorm, put it all away meticulously and cleaned the whole room... whenever I have an enourmous amount of school work to do, I start off by doing my laundry first, then I clean my room and then magically my space is transformed into a place more suitable for productivity and papers...
I don't think I ever want to own a washer dryer...

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