Did you KNOW that is Boston there's a service called delivery wash and fold laundry?! How could I not have known about this before??? $1.37/pound with pick up and delivery included. That's cheaper that it was when I lived in Fitchburg and had to drive everything over to the laundromat. They even have discounted monthly service plans. Who knew?!?
When we started our bathroom project we had our 220 volt outlet for our dryer moved...and haven't gotten the new dryer yet. We don't use the dryer much anyway usually, but the thing is...I've got a huge backlog of laundry, and it's supposed to rain for the next 5 days. Our indoor laundry rack is already overloaded... so I'm seriously considering this whole someone else doing my laundry for me thing, at least this once. Seriously, with 4 houseguests in the last month I needed to wash every sheet we own, and half of the towels (okay the towels is a bit of an exaggeration).
So what does a load of laundry cost? $20. Is that highway robbery? I'm not sure. A laundromat would probably cost at least $5, so paying someone else to pick up, launder, and deliver my cloths seems pretty realistic. Even still, I won't be using the service regularly. I mean, I probably do (or should do) at least 4 loads of laundry a month. There's no way I can justify $80/month on laundry services when I have a washing machine (no matter how tempting it sounds). But it is nice to know that if I get stuck there's a quick way out. If I can get their website to recognize my address...
4 comments:
4 loads per month?
We do 6-8 per WEEK. Sometimes more. We have 5 laundry baskets in the house (separate from the hampers) and they all tend to be in use all the time.
Granted, there are twice as many of us, and two of us tend to be rather messy (and share the mess with the other two). And, hubby and I wear strictly casual clothes for work (we probably do a load of drycleaning every other year at most).
I'm imagining how much free time we'd have if we only had a load/week of laundry to do :)
There are laundry services around here that charge by the pound, but I've never tried them. I think I'd be scared to get back all of my clothes about 3 sizes smaller and faded to a grayish-pink color :)
Good luck with the laundry dilemma1
Are you serious? How in the WORLD do you keep up with that may loads?? Seriously, when do you do laundry, what part of the day?
Gerd does his laundry separately and has about a load every month or so. His take on clothes is a little weird in itself (indoor clothes, outdoor clothes, work clothes, indoor shoes, outdoor shoes, etc) Of course I do the sheets and towels (and he complains because he doesn't think we need to waste the water washing them each week, truth be told, we get pretty behind in washing sheets too).
I actually love wash and fold service. When I was in the military it was a reimbursable expense. I've never had any trouble with weird colors or shrinkage, but I would always separate my laundry beforehand and never included anything I was unsure about. Still, good thing you wouldn't want to use the service, it'd probably cost you a fortune! Like $600/month!
I don't wash everything I wear every time. I probably wear jeans 3-5 times, depending on how dirty they get. I wear shirts 2-4 times, unless I get sweaty (my office is a freezer). Only socks and underwear are single use.
I usually have one load of underwear/socks, 1-2 loads of darks, 1 load of lights, and sheets/towels. I can't remember the last time I bought something that needs to be dry cleaned, I never get around to dry cleaning anything anyway. I HATE laundry, so I tend to put it off as long as possible.
You know, I wrote a response comment, but it disappeared! It went something like this:
PER WEEK?!?! Holy COW! How do you fit it into your schedule? Seriously? On weekends, after work? How do you manage that much laundry? I can't even conceive of it.
I should mention that I'm not including my husbands laundry in the mix (he does his own, but really has only about a load a month).
We wear clothes more than once. Only underwear and socks are one-timers. Shirts get worn 2-4 times, unless of course I sweat or spill something on me while eating. Jeans get worn 3-5 times, seems a bit extreme, but I only wear them after work and on the weekends. I change into "work clothes" usually if I'm doing something like gardening (or then the dirty jeans become gardening jeans for the week...)
No, we don't have kiddos, so I'm sure that would throw off our laundry saving vibe. I LOVE laundry service. It was a reimbursable expense in the military, so I got used to it then. Seriously awesome (but you do have to separate out your loads before you give it to them. I ended up sending off one HUGE basket of darks, just to see how it worked. Loved it of course. Still, won't be using the service often since it's way more expensive than just doing it myself (and I don't usually get so far behind). When the dryer is in order, or the weather is in order it's a lot easier. I still ended up doing about 7 loads myself throughout the week.
Our current washer has an "express wash" cycle that takes under an hour that we use almost exclusively (occasionally adding an extra rinse, but I figure the short cycle saves electricity and water too). And the washer & dryer run almost continually all weekend. Plus a couple of loads during the week (but those are either emergency or tend to sit in the machines for a couple of days).
I fear weekends out-of-town and when someone suggests an all-day out-of-the-house event because I know that we'll get behind on the laundry.
Summer is better. Clothes are smaller :) And no school uniforms. The uniforms are kinda expensive so we have just enough to make it through a week but they must be done every weekend. Hubby and I both have enough clothes to go a minimum of 2 weeks. School stuff not withstanding, the kids each have 2-4 weeks worth of clothes. Big closets aren't a luxury for 2-job families..they're a necessity for the rare occasions that we catch up on all the washing.
And now that our little guy is making it through 99% of the nights without wetting the bed, we don't have to wash his sheets several times a week. Next battleground: getting kids to reliably put away their own clean clothes...
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