Dirty laundry

For years, I did my own laundry. In college, I'd spend $10 on a bottle of liquid detergent and a box of dryer sheets, which would last me an entire semester. Every two weeks or so, I'd carry my laundry basket to the basement of whatever residential hall I was living in, remembering to separate lights from darks, and read a book while the aging washing machines first hummed gently, then threatened to explode. During my last two years in art school, I drove from my apartment in New Brunswick, NJ, to a laundromat in nearby Highland Park staffed entirely by 4-foot-11 Hispanic women.

Our apartment in NYC does not have a washer or dryer, so "doing laundry" means stuffing my clothes in a bag and dropping it off one block down the street, at Prince Street Cleaners. In other words, I don't spend any money on detergent or dryer sheets, but I do pay someone else to do my laundry for me. That someone is John, the amiable Indonesian immigrant who runs Prince Street Cleaners. Like many recent immigrants, he's an enterprising guy -- when the Sony PlayStation 3 was released last year, he waited in line for a week to purchase one of the first units, and then sold it on eBay for a 500% profit.

Perhaps to some of you reading this, paying for someone else to do your laundry is unconscionable, even ridiculous. After all, there are self-serve laundromats all over the city. Sometimes, even I question the economics of it all. I certainly don't pretend that I wouldn't rather have my own washer and dryer. But really, I'm paying for the convenience. I drop off the laundry in the morning on the way to work, and I pick it up on the way home, every pair of boxers neatly folded, every t-shirt turned right-side-out. In college, I had the time to sit and wait for towels to dry in the spin-dryer. Now, I barely have the time to pick the towels off the bathroom floor.

So how much do I actually pay? Today, I dropped off 15 t-shirts, eight pairs of boxers, five pairs of socks, and two pairs of shorts, for which I paid $11.30 (the cleaners charge by weight). If that sounds like a lot, well, I did say that John was an enterprising guy.