For some students, toting the soiled stack of dirty laundry home on weekends may be a potential fix, but for out-of-state students and those who want to have a social life on weekends (never mind being able to breath fresh air in their car and retain the good will of their parents!), it’s time to develop a laundry strategy.
Before you wake up one day to a dearth of unsoiled unmentionables, forced to pull the inside-out trick once again, you need to plan ahead. Believe it or not, the management skills you’ll use and hone by simply being purposeful about your laundry chores will save you some embarrassment and maybe even a few bucks.
1. Plan ahead!
If you wait until you’ve just spilled a latte on your last pair of jeans to think about doing laundry, you’re going to be in trouble! You need a few supplies to make your first college laundry experience a success. Here are the basic tools of the trade:
- Laundry soap or detergent (I recommend the kind formulated for cold-water use.)
- Dryer sheets (Not all washing machines are equipped for liquid fabric softener.)
- A laundry bag, hamper, laundry basket, plastic bin (Or even one of each!)
- A roll of quarters (You’ll probably need 5-6 per wash load and 1 for every 10-15 minutes of dryer time.)
2. Pencil it in!
Most Laundromats or dorm laundry rooms have times when they tend to be busy and times when they’re typically slow. Saturday mornings and evenings are likely to be popular times for students to do wash, so maybe you want to schedule your regular wash time when you’ll be able to have some peace and quiet—and as many machines to use as you have loads to do.
Clearly, you don’t want to be stuck searching for that stubborn sock’s elusive mate when you have a major project due the next day. Even once you determine a regular timeframe for doing laundry, you’ll want to make it a flexible routine, changing according to your personal weekly needs.
3. Purpose to be efficient!
You can save a few bucks and avoid wasting time by following a few simple tips:
- Never wash a less-than-full load.
Sometimes this will mean combining lights and darks, but that should be okay, as long as you don’t have a brand new red sweater in the mix. By washing all your clothes in cold water (with the detergent I recommended in #1), you’ll be unlikely to have colors bleed.
- Use less than you think you need.
Most washing-machine repair professionals say that people tend to use too much soap. By using half the recommended amount, you’ll save your campus maintenance personnel a headache or two and yourself some much-needed extra pocket change. For dryer sheets, you can literally cut your costs by cutting the sheets in half.
- Maximize your laundry time.
By having many machines going at once, you’ll reduce the time you’ll have to spend. In the 20 or so minutes that you have the wash cycles in progress, you can do some reading for a class or review your next week’s schedule—including your planned laundry time.
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These are great tips for college students. My friend and I actually started a wash and fold laundry service for college students. We live near a large campus and thought there had to be kids that needed to free up time by using a laundry service. This has been great for us and continues to expand.
http://www.laundrycare.biz
That’s pretty cool, Amanda. Good luck with the laundry business!