Laundry

As I type this, I am sitting in my room shirtless. Sorry, not trying to titillate anyone. I just washed 2 t-shirts and one pair of underwear in the bathroom sink. The t-shirts are drying on the radiator in my room, while the underwear waits its turn. In my shirtless state, I am more desperate for clean t-shirts right now than I am for clean underwear.

I like the building I live in. My roommates are good people, I have lightning fast wireless internet, it's close to the office where I do my research, and the view is spectacular. Of course, everything cannot be perfect. Living on the top floor means you hear the elevator motors constantly. You can (kinda) get used to that. Another annoyance is that there are hardly enough washers and dryers to accomodate all the residents. In this building live about 366 people. In the basement are 4 washing machines. That's right. Four regular capacity washing machines. My calculator tells me that works out to be 91.5 people for each machine.

Here's where things get nerdy: These are European washers, which means they have longer wash cycles than American machines. The shortest cycle you can have is 1 hour. The longest is 2 hours. Let's assume that the average cycle length is 1.5 hours, and that each person in the building washes one load of laundry per week. That doesn't seem too unreasonable. Let's figure out how often these machines would be in use each week with those numbers. Here's the math:

(1 load per person per week) * (1.5 hours per load) * (366 people) = 549 HOURS PER WEEK

How many hours are in a week, you ask? Why 168 of course!

There are also six regular capacity dryers in the basement, but one is broken so it's really only five. Seventy three point two people per dryer. Since dryers take twice as long as washers, it's actually worse with dryers if you do the math. I now realize why I see my roommate Bettina setting up a drying rack in her room every week.

So this laundry situation is really not working out. I've tried doing laundry three different nights of the week, hoping to find that magical day when everybody else has clean clothes. None of them have worked yet. Sunday's a big laundry night. Thursday is too. And now, Tuesday also appears to be a big laundry night. I managed to get some clothes in last week Sunday, but had to dry them in my room by stringing rope around like a drunken spider's web. So I'm pushing on a week and a half without doing laundry, and that's tough when you can count the number of t-shirts you have on one hand.

Summary: Scott is going to find a laundromat. Not tonight, though. The students from my Intensive German course are meeting for a beer tonight, so I gotta join them The intructors will be there too, so it's almost mandatory in way....