Midnight Laundromat

There’s never a convenient time for the task of doing laundry, what with the carving time out of one’s day to wash, dry, hang, and fold. When I was in college, another hurdle was added to the inconvenience, the lack of available machines.

For the thousands of students living on campus at U.C. Santa Barbara, the number of clothes washers and dryers was sub par, to say the least. Mom and Dad Klem lived 103 miles away. As long as I went home every few weeks, I was good, as clean clothes go. Otherwise, let the hunt for machines commence.

At some point, a guy couldn’t keep picking stuff up off the floor or out of his dirty clothes rucksack and wearing them. Eventually, defeat would be conceded and doing laundry was the only viable option.

In my early college days I made laundry attempts in the morning, afternoon, evening, and even late at night. Maddening was the laundry traffic through that on campus coin-op laundromat. Even if you did find a machine or two you’d still need to wait for someone else to finish their load because you needed at least three machines. An abundant load of dirty laundry ensues when laundry is done only when the clean, or wearable, stuff is zeroed out. This complete wardrobe depletion necessitated multiple machines to restore.


1989

The clothes washing process was easily stretched into three hours because start times were staggered as washing machines became available. Crummy. At least until my roommates and I devised an ingenious plan.

We went at 2:00 am and took the laundromat by storm. Under this new protocol the laundromat on campus near the dorms was typically empty of patrons at this hour. We’d descend upon the 20 washers and dryers occupying most of the machines, have plenty of room in there, and get out in under two hours!

Go home, take a nap, and you’d be ready to start the day with an entirely clean roster of clothes to run through.


Reflecting back on this time in my life, quarters were seen more as laundry tokens than currency. It wasn’t until Wife Klem and I became homeowners in 1998 that quarters regained their status as actual currency.
-klem