Are you one of those people, like me, that thinks you're relatively intelligent but some simple things just seem to pass you by? Like Math. I am convinced Math is very easy - all forms of Math - I think I just had bad teachers. One of these days, I'll find the button that releases Math and will become an expert. I'll have a business card that just says "I am a Math Expert? Try Me. 1+1=2. See."
The other day I had another one of those encounters that reminds me that even though I am a Math expert*, there are some basic things that don't occur to me immediately. Or even several weeks later. But when they do, it's like all of a sudden, things got a whole lot easier and I can free up my mind from the mundane to work on my Math problems.
So, now that I've moved house and am saving a lot of money in rent, I am dealing with one of those things that comes with saving money in rent. Not my own laundry. I have always had my own laundry, starting with when I lived at home. I threw it down to the bottom of the stairs, it got washed and thrown back up at me. Brilliant. Every house, apartment I've ever lived in has always had the convenience of a washer and dryer, even if I had to share with room mates. But now I have to share one washer and one dryer with 11 other apartments. And I have to pay for the privilege. $1.25 to wash and $1.00 to dry as long as you don't need to dry anything for longer than 44 minutes. Would it have killed them to give us 45?
So far, I've been lucky - no one has ever been using either appliance when I've gone up there and I've chosen pretty random times. So, I've come to the following conclusions - no one else lives here and if they do, they are all a bunch of dirty f*&%ers. It stresses me out quite a lot to do laundry - first I have to go up 2 sets of stairs which means facing the fact at the top that, I am unfit. Since I was doing an excellent job of ignoring that, this is a bit of a slap in the face. I throw my stuff in the machine, ignore the instructions, put the money in, set the timer on my phone for 30 minutes since that appears to be how long it takes. Go back downstairs and anxiously await the beep on my phone. I have a fear of forgetting I have laundry in there and someone taking my clothes out and seeing my knickers. I'm sure they'd be wondering why I'm still washing a pair that looks like there's not much left to them, but let me tell you, they are my favorites and they still have a good couple of quality years in them.
After the first time when I separated my lights and darks (thanks, Mum), I decided to hell with this, it's every man/item for himself and if colors run, then that item clearly was never meant to be. Survival of the fittest - laundry-style. I try and stick to a laundry run, once a week which works well for my clothes. However, I resent paying $1.25 to do my towels. They barely fill up the barrel of the machine and it seems like a waste of time.
And that's when the penny dropped. Or the $1.25. Why not throw the dirty towels in the laundry basket and get fresh ones from the pile that took a game of Tetris to try and figure out how to get ALL the towels I own into the cupboard. Then at the end of two weeks...or even more should I feel the need...I can wash all of them. I have enough towels, bathmats, face clothes and hand towels to last through a zombie apocalypse.
I think this might just work. How did I not see this sooner? Do you see what I mean about basic stuff? Is it because my head is so full of smart, intelligent stuff? That's probably it. Now all I have to do is figure out the dryer issue...if I wash a bunch of towels in one go, will 44 minutes be long enough to dry them? But wait, I'll use my Math expertise to calculate the weight to heat ratio**...
*Almost. Still looking for the button. Looking for a lot of buttons actually.
**That doesn't sound quite right, possibly I need to take into account the cosine pythagoreal sum value.
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