Laundry day is probably one of my least favorite days ever.
It’s not as if the chore of doing my laundry is difficult or anything, but the task in itself is a huge pain in the neck, especially in some of the Gannon buildings.
Now, when I first got to Gannon, this wasn’t really an issue for me. I lived in North Hall, a building where two of the floors had washers and dryers and only five floors competed to use 12 washers and dryers.
Then last year I moved to Crispo Hall, which had significantly fewer residents, but still, about a hundred people lived there and used the washers and dryers, of which there were four.
And you may think that that’s not so bad, but considering the fact that most people do at least two loads of laundry at a time, it becomes a bigger problem. I mean, you get three or more people who want to do their laundry at the same time and you’re screwed.
But that’s only if each person only does two loads of laundry; sometimes there’s a separate load for a person’s sheets.
Now I live in Harborview. There are a good deal more people who live here compared to when I lived in Crispo; however, there are only two more washers and dryers. It seems no matter what time you try to go downstairs and do your laundry, you’re going to have to fight people to get your laundry done – unless it’s 2 a.m.
Now this leads to several problems. If anyone needs to use a washer or dryer, and all of them are full except for one that finished all of eight seconds ago, you have to be the jerk who takes the clothes out and sets them aside so you can use the washer or dryer.
This happens way more than you would expect, because there is not a timer on the washers in Harborview so you have to take a guess as to when they’re going to be done. And sometimes that’s difficult because the dryers aren’t consistent.
Just this past week, my roommate put in two loads of laundry at the same time and one load was done washing about 20 minutes before the other one was.
Another problem you run into is unless you put less than a medium-sized load into the dryer for 55 minutes, chances are, your clothes aren’t going to be dry when you come back to get them. Seeing as most people have pretty large loads of laundry, that means either you dry your clothes for two cycles or you take up more than one dryer for one load.
This leads to there being one less dryer for someone else to use.
I know this is a small college campus and we get to do our laundry for free, but seriously it would make all of our lives a lot easier if an investment could be made in either more washers and dryers or better quality ones.
I just would rather not be the person taking up three of the six dryers because my clothes won’t dry any other way.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
