Rinse and repeat

My laundry luck ran out today. I washed a megaload of clothes — all my usual stuff plus the new purchases — but apparently it was too much for the poor dryer to handle, because instead of coming out nice and wrinkle-free as usual, my clothes emerged looking like they’d been in a suitcase in a cyclone. Now, ordinarily I would just iron them back into shape, but as it happens, my roommate moved out on Saturday (got married) and took his iron with him.

The first idea that ran through my head was to do the whole thing over again. But that seemed like overkill; surely I could get by with just the dryer part again, right? I didn’t know if I needed to do anything special, so I called up a friend and found that putting a wet washcloth in with them and running it for ten to twenty minutes should do the trick. Of little faith I was, however, and disbelieving, I realized that what I could do, and with a fair amount of faith to boot, was to soak all my clothes again (pretending to be the washer) and then put them in for another cycle on the dryer.

Two minutes later I had a big cooking pot full of water on the kitchen table, and one by one I immersed each of the fifteen or so articles of clothing, strained the water out as best I could, and put them in my laundry box. Evidently I didn’t get the water out as well as the washer does, because the box was about five times heavier than usual. I ran back over to the laundry room and popped in another four quarters and crossed my fingers. My poor cardboard laundry box looked like something had died in it.

Fifty minutes later, I opened the dryer with anticipation. Soggy. Almost everything was soggy. I guess I really didn’t do as good of a job as the washer. I have new respect for them. Since I didn’t particularly feel like running yet another cycle, I took them back into my apartment and now they’re all on hangers in my closet. With luck (which I don’t seem to have much of), they should be dry by tomorrow. If not, perish the thought, I’ll have to try putting them in the oven or something. :P

LOL! Ben you are a funny guy.

Skip the oven and the microwave or you might just make the headlines in the Daily Herald and find that you need to make an expensive trip to the dreaded mall after you get out of the burn unit. I remember a headliner in the 80’s where it actually happened to a woman who was trying to dry her undies.

I know that it is hard for a guy to take a woman’s advice…I assume that you called a woman to find out what to do. Anyway, you should have taken your friend’s advice with the wet wash cloth. Next time split the load in half and use half the quarters for each dryer. In half the time your new wardrobe will be as good as new.

Or you can do what I do and (first off) make sure you get the clothes out right on time and then hang them up/lay them out so they don’t get wrinkled/work out the wrinkles on their own while they’re warm. Sometimes I’ll even get them out of the dryer early, or skip the dryer altogether and hang them up to dry. Utah’s dry enough that it would only take a few hours for your clothes to air dry if you set them out flat on your bed/couch/any empty flat space/hung them up in the closet with decent amounts of space between each shirt.

Ugg, I hate soggy clothes that are supposed to be dry. We have one washing machine in our apartment complex that doesn’t seem to know what the spin cycle is because the clothes come out sopping wet. I had to wring them out like you did, and they still came out of the dryer damp. I’ve used that washer twice since it broke and never again. I don’t forgive washers or dryers easily.

LOL! ;) Oh, you have a cardboard laundry box? Poor guy. It’s harder with coin operated washers/dryers. If you were able to have more choices on the settings, you could’ve just done a rinse cycle, and then put them in again. Sometimes I hang up my clothes to dry because it helps cool down my sweltering room–every little bit counts, right?!

If you roll the wet clothes in a dry towel and stomp on it, the clothes will be no damper than after a good spin cycle. Then you can hang them up or lay them out and they will dry quickly. At the very end of the drying process it is then very cheap to put them in a dryer for a few minutes to have wrinkle free clothes.

The wet washcloth really does work.
The other thing that’s helpful is to hang your wrinkly clothes in the bathroom when you take a hot shower. The moisture in the air from the steam will un-wrinkle your clothes beautifully.

J: The microwave! I didn’t even think of that! Brilliant… :P And just for the record, I have no problem whatsoever taking a woman’s advice, or asking for directions, or what have you. (And yes, it was a woman. Asking a guy for advice on laundry is like asking Britney Spears to do integral calculus. No offense to Brit, of course.) I wish I could use half the quarters for each dryer, but you have to use all the quarters — it’s the way coin-operated dryers work, at least in my apartment. Someday I’ll have my own washer again…o blessed day!

Joni: I do get them out right on time! That’s why I don’t bother owning an iron — I’ve never needed one before now. It’s just that I had too many clothes in the darn dryer…

Andy: I agree. Washers and dryers need to work. Otherwise we may as well just go back to the scrubboards and clotheslines.

Holly: I’ve meant to get a real laundry box/hamper/whatever for a while now, but I keep forgetting. And I like to think I’m frugal. :P My room’s half underground, so heat has never really been an issue, luckily. I don’t even need to turn on the air conditioning. I am blessed. :)

J Deux: I’ll have to try that next time my dryer pulls a Benedict Arnold on me.

Amy: Ah, my roommate used to hang wrinkly clothes in the bathroom. I don’t know why I’d forgotten about that. I did try it with two shirts this morning, though, and they came out soggy and not really wrinkle-free. Maybe there’s a curse upon these clothes. I’m surprised I haven’t been strangled to death by them yet…