Mobile, Alabama: Laundry Economics

 

El Paso Laundry building, Chihuahuita, El Paso. November 2016.

In Mobile, I have access to washers and dryers that are onsite and free. I've not been blessed with this amenity since Alamogordo! 

Such luxury means a return to a weekly regimen instead of the biweekly routine of Birmingham. 

It means a year's direct cost savings of $221 and an opportunity cost savings of 65 hours in sitting-around-waiting-for-laundry-to-process time. 

Because the appliances are in the same building as my apartment, I don't even have to factor in the inconvenience of inclement weather. 

Because the appliances are in the same building as my apartment, I doubt if something dramatic like these two incidents (one on the laundry shed roof in Opelousas and the other in the laundry room a few doors down from my apartment in Alamogordo) will happen, as it requires a key to access the building. 

Lavanderia (drop-off laundry), Mexico City. November 2018.

Related posts

2020: Laundry Economics of the South (Birmingham)

2020: Laundry Economics Revisited (Tucson)

2019: Volunteer Laundress (El Paso)

2018: Mexico City: My Laundry

2013: The Economics of Laundry (Lafayette)

 

Clothes drying on line, Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. September 2011.

 

 

 

Birmingham, AL: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 888: Laundry Economics of the South

Laundry tote and shelves. Birmingham, Alabama. September 2020.

Caucasus Georgia has its Khachapuri Index. The Economist has its Big Mac Index.


I've got my Laundry Economics, I guess, considering I write about this regularly.

The Economics of Laundry (2013)

In Tucson (March 2019), embedded in another post, I noted: Now that I'm in my 'permanent' domicile in Tucson, I'm again factoring in the economics of laundry, as my apartment has laundry facilities on site, but one pays. And, indeed, nowadays one does pay via pre-pay laundry card instead of having to negotiate the cumbersome quarters I messed with in the past.

Here in Tucson, it's $1.75 for one wash load and $1.25 for one dryer cycle of about 20 minutes. I still avoid buying white and light-colored clothing so I can throw all of my stuff into one load. Three out of four weeks, I do only one load of laundry per week.


Tucson, AZ: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 17: Laundry Economics Revisited (April 2020)


Now Birmingham, Alabama.

My apartment complex has no laundry facilities, so for the first time in many years, I've got to schlep my goods to a laundromat. Being as we are in COVID Times, this adds an extra dimension to a mundane chore.

Not to mention that the circulation of quarters has stumbled, creating shortages at stores and, yeah, laundromats.

The two laundromats I've visited in Birmingham still eat quarters and not cards, but fortunately, I've not run up against a supply issue at either location.

But here was an unanticipated surprise: There are no one-load machines! The smallest machines are for two loads. Four bucks!!!!

Whoa, mama. That required a new laundry economics rule for me.

Instead of a weekly laundry routine, I now do laundry every two weeks. Which is just as well, I guess, in the COVID Era, as I reduce my COVID exposure risk by half (in the context of laundry excursions).

 I find that the two laundromats I frequent are, overall, pretty good at protecting customers and staff from COVID exposure. There are inconsistencies from week to week with staff or customer mask wearing and with maintaining clean surfaces of counters, machines, and laundry carts. I'll quantify "pretty good" as 3.5 on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being exceptional.

Fortunately, by having a Prius (because of its quiet, mostly-battery-powered climate control), I can hang out in comfort (and non-exposure for me OR infection to others in case I'm afflicted without knowing it) in my car betwixt loads.

Thank goodness I have a plentiful supply of underwear, which supports my bi-weekly laundry regimen.

About my photo. The two-part, hanging shelves-and-laundry tote gives me so much pleasure to look at, despite its prosaic purpose and its institutional gray color. I pull the tote off the hooks when it's time to go the laundromat, then toss it into my car. Because there are only three shelves, I'm hopeful the shelving part will serve a double purpose for easily-accessible organization of camping stuff in my car when I use it as Chez Prius.

About the towel that hangs from the tote. This is an artifact from the Sonoran Desert. Made in Guatemala. Retrieved by one of my fellow water carriers to the desert on a sortie we took together, who graciously allowed me to have it. Maybe a relic from Central American refugees to the United States. I touch this towel every day. I think of a person who undertook a long, long journey for self-rescue. Perhaps alone, perhaps with friends or family, perhaps with people who began as strangers.

Tucson, AZ: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 17: Laundry Economics Revisited

At the laundromat. El Paso, Texas. February 2019.

As a renter who lives in budget apartments that don't include washers and dryers, I use communal laundry facilities. Fortunately, all of my domestic apartment choices thus far have included facilities on-site.

It was in 2013, when I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, that I first learned some lessons about laundry economics. This was the first time in my domestic rootless life when I had to pay to use a washer and dryer.

Not mentioned in that 2013 post about laundry economics was another lesson I learned. I remember clearly the elation I felt upon this discovery. Which was: Buy more pairs of underwear! What a eureka moment!

Underwear takes up so little space and is so light! By having more pairs of underwear, I could extend the number of days without having to do laundry! I don fresh underwear each day, and although I could handwash it, I don't want the hassle. I do feel okey-dokey about wearing external clothing three, or maybe even four times, before tossing it into the laundry bin. (Since COVID keeps me home most days, four times is common.)

So now enter COVID.

There are two laundry facilities in my apartment complex.

One day, in March, the managers suddenly closed the facilities due to COVID!

They directed tenants to nearby(ish) laundromats.

To protect tenants and apartment management staff.

What?!

Diverting tenants from a relatively low-traffic, on-site facility to one that would be often filled with customers? And where one must hang about said laundromat until the laundry was complete, thereby extending the duration of exposure to and from others?  It was a decision that would result in greater danger of exposure to tenants (and to other Tucsonans), rather than less.

And what about the tenants who had no transportation? Or single-parent tenants with young children, who would have to schlep their kiddos to the laundromats, putting them at greater risk for contagion? 

Fortunately, after (I assume) some consternation expressed by tenants (including me), the management sought and found processes to protect both tenants and office staff, and they re-opened the on-site facilities some days later.

But the closure prompted me to consider strategies to change my usual practice of once-a-week, one-load laundry work to every other week.

I counted out my underwear. Twelve.

I have bought six more pairs of underwear.

El Paso 2019: Volunteer Laundress

El Paso laundromat. February 2019.

While in my month's layover in El Paso, I offered my volunteer services to an El Paso organization that serves immigrants and refugees. A volunteer coordinator asked if I'd be able to do laundry.

Oh. My first thought was: That's not what I'd been expecting. Doing laundry is completely behind the scenes. No interaction with the folks being served, no direct observation of how my service impacted anyone. I'll even say this: No volunteer glory. Look, I'm doing good works! A stagehand and not an actor. Hell, not even a stagehand - a stagehand's assistant.

But in the very next moment, I laughed at myself and thought, this is perfect. It is exactly the kind of experience I should be having. And it's what the organization needs, so little ego girl, go sit down on that chair over there.



The romance of laundry

I like the word 'laundress.'

There's the movie My Beautiful Laundrette, which, upon just now visiting a link about this movie, I realized I've never seen it, and had, in fact, confused its title and redemptive vibe with another movie, Babette's Feast. "Ette" is a heady suffix.


There's the chi-chi restaurant in Napa Valley called The French Laundry.

El Paso laundromat. February 2019.

There's something saucy, naughty, about being a laundress, although I could be confusing that with the French maid thing.

There is the sensory pleasure of fresh-laundered sheets, now dry, snapping on a bendy clothesline on a sun-bright day, smelling of bleach and breeze, and feeling warm and firm to the hand as you stroke the smooth cotton fabric.

El Paso laundromat. January 2019.

The unromantic view

Damn, it's dirty laundry. Not even mine, but someone else's.

I pick it up in aggressively industrial-like black trash bags, and when I return the laundry, clean, it is placed atop the somewhat-orderly heaps of other clean towels, sheets, blankets, pillowcases that line a hallway. 

El Paso laundromat. February 2019.

The soul of laundry

There was a TV show called St. Elsewhere. Before it veered off the road with a masked-villain story arc, its wit and elegance of word and story put it among my lifetime favorites. (It was no surprise that the same creators later went on to parent the unparalleled Northern Exposure.)

There was an episode in which a custodian was interviewed. The interviewer asked him about the drudgery, the unpleasantness - the menial nature - of cleaning up bodily fluids from floors, walls, surfaces, toilets - the blood, viscera, entrails, vomit, urine, feces, sputum, et al. The hospital custodian replied that it was - almost - sacred work to remove this human effluvia.

Or it could have been the TV show, ER. Or in my creative memory.

These articles, What You Can learn About Job Satisfaction from a Janitor, and Want to Be Happier At Work: Learn How From These 'Job Crafters,' referenced the work of Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski. She defined "job crafters," people with so-called menial jobs who perceive their work on a much higher plane of vision than what is in the HR job description. For example:

"[These individuals] didn’t see themselves as custodial workers at all. ... Some, when asked what their jobs were, would say 'I’m an ambassador for the hospital' or even, in one case, 'I’m a healer. I create sterile spaces in the hospital. My role here is to do everything I can to promote the healing of the patients.'”

I was impressed by the quality of the towels I washed, presumably all donated by area residents. Sure, there were a few that were a little worn, but by and large, these were thick and thirsty bath towels. How pleasurable, when so many things about one’s life as a refugee is uncertain, you can wrap your body in such a nice towel after a hot shower, or to dry off the skin of your little daughter or son after a good washing up.

A couple of blankets I washed were soiled with feces. A child, an adult? Illness? Stress? Fear? Age-related incontinence?

When I pulled warm pillowcases from the dryer, and folded them atop the laundromat's orange plastic counter, I found myself smoothing the tops of the just-folded covers, imagining the heads of children, teens, men, and women laying their heads on them, feeling safe, perhaps, on that night, as they laid on cots in one of the large, open rooms they shared with family, friends, and strangers.

Mexico City: My Laundry

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

Once a week, I take my laundry to one of the several lavanderias in my neighborhood.

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

Sometimes my laundry is ready for me to pick up the same day, sometimes I´m asked to pick it up the next afternoon.


To have my items washed, dried, folded, and placed in a tightly-wrapped plastic shroud, it costs 20 pesos per kilo.

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

One time, my laundry weighed 3.5 kilos and it cost me 70 pesos (about $3.50 US). Another time, my laundry weighed 3 kilos, so it cost me 60 pesos (about $3 US).

Lavanderia, Mexico City. November 2018.

The people who operate the lavanderia that I patronize are amiable and professional.

I estimate a minimum of three lavanderias within four square blocks of my residence. Does the local demand for external laundry services support such an intense supply or is the competition to attain and retain customers fierce?

Are the lavanderias owned by a chain, franchised, or individually owned? I see the name "Edison" associated with them, but I don´t know if this is a chain brand or perhaps the brand of the machines used.

I don´t know the answers to any of these questions.

Rootless: The Economics of Laundry

Laundry day, Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

I dislike having to use a laundromat. Although one can pass the time at a laundromat in a relaxing or productive manner in a number of ways, still, I feel trapped there.

In Alamogordo, it was great – I had the use of a free (!) washer and dryer only steps from my front door. The distance was no greater than when I had my house and I had my machines in the basement.

In Playa del Carmen, it was also good – it was affordable to drop my laundry off at a commercial laundry, where staff would wash, dry, and fold (!) my stuff, and I could pick it up at the end of the day. I’m not sure if this would have been as economical if I lived there long-term, but for the time I was there, I loved this neighborhood amenity.

In Caucasus Georgia, well, yikes. My first hostess had no machines, so I did all my washing and drying by hand. In my second hostess’ home, there was a washing machine (yay!) and we hung our clothes out to dry. Because water and sometimes electricity were unavailable, it was good policy to not delay one’s washing routine, as the outages were unpredictable.

Laundry day, Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

Here in Lafayette, I’m delighted that I’ve got a washer and dryer on site. The laundry shed is almost as conveniently close as it was in Alamogordo. What’s even better is that the machines are in good working order, and fast. The wash takes half an hour and the dryer takes 45 minutes.

The downside: Each load costs $1.50 for each machine.

Laundry day, Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

The economic consequences of my new laundry situation:

• The machines take only quarters, so part of my new living routine must include the regular acquisition of same. This isn’t that simple for me, because I don’t use cash much in my transactions. To feed the weekly quarter habit, I’ll need to score 12 quarters! Maybe I’ll find a place where I can get a month’s supply at a time. …. Ah, just realized I can stop at a local laundromat (and maybe a car wash) and get quarters from their money-changing machines. (On a national scale, all this money-changing for washing clothes and vehicles seems like a lot of busy work. … surely some places are going to pre-loaded cards by now?)
• Each washer/dryer load costs $3, so if I separate my colors and whites, that’s $6 per week. Which works out to $312 per year.
• This is an incentive to do my clothes in one load per week to save $156.
• The cost is also an incentive to avoid buying white fabrics in the future. As it is, I have already tossed my whites in with my colors to achieve one load of wash instead of two.