Confession: I miss going to the laundromat.
I dreamed of having a washer and dryer in my home for a long time, but now that I have them…well, you know me. They’re not the right washer and dryer. They don’t work properly. They don’t look nice. I don’t like that I have to go downstairs to use them and the carpet on the stairs is always dirty. I don’t like the laundry room. Complain, complain, complain.
Okay, I get it. And I’m grateful to have laundry facilities in my basement. Truly, I am. And I did often complain about doing the laundry when I had to lug it to the laundromat every week. But the truth is, I kind of loved the laundromat. Here are my top 10 reasons why:
1) I could do all my loads of laundry at once, without having to go back and load and reload and reload.
2) I like the hum of all the machines going at once. I find it very soothing.
3) It was a great excuse to eat a bag of cheesies and drink a ginger ale from the convenience store across the street – all that waiting around made me so snacky!
4) I like the smell of dryer sheets.
5) There was all that space on those large tables to fold my clothes.
6) All that washing and drying and folding and organizing – my kind of fun!
7) Waiting for the laundry meant lots of time to do nothing except read a good book.
8) Jesse, who ran the laundromat, was a good guy, and we became neighbourhood friends.
9) You’d see all kinds of crazies around the laundromat. I love those crazies. They reminded me how much I loved living downtown.
10) I got to walk by the pretty wedding dress shop on my way to and from the laundromat, and see the beautiful dresses in the window. The proprietors of the shop were kind enough to change the window display each week, so there was always new dresses to ohh and ahh over.
11) I always wished I’d meet Ron Sexsmith in the laundromat, like Stu did years ago. Alas, it never did happen for me. But that dream always kept me going back.
Fahrin Kermally 