Sometimes I don’t understand why I remember so vividly the least remarkable events in my life. Like the first time I used a laundromat.
I was at college, my first year, my first couple of weeks. I remember it because I was discovering I had mononucleosis. I put my clothes in the machine. I was so tired, I laid down on a laundry table and fell asleep despite the spinning and dinging of washing machines and driers going on all around me. I couldn’t be bothered to walk back to my room not far away in the same dorm. About a week at school and I was already out.
And so would begin my relationship with laundromats.
I graduated to a local laundromat in graduate school, the kind not attached to your building. The kind down the street, the kind just close enough that it didn’t make sense to drive there, unless I had waited too long to do it. Laundry was never at the top of my list of things to do. I had a PhD to finish, more importantly, I had to live up to the expectations of my brilliant advisor and colleagues-in-training.
But sometimes I needed to do my laundry. Once before leaving for a weeklong conference with my advisor guilt tripping me about my experiments “now is not a good time to go (it never was)”, I was running around my lab screaming, “I have to do my laundry!” I said it enough times that my advisor considered buying a washing machine and dryer for our building on the university campus if that would make it easier for us to do our work. That was the kind of person he was. At the same time, I wasn’t interested in leaving my panties by accident at work.
I lived in an old house converted into four apartments in an upscale neighborhood. The status of the neighborhood had no influence on the type of characters I encountered at laundromat at the end of my street. If you’re a young woman, there’s always some guy in the laundromat who wants to talk to you when all you want to do is wash your clothes and get out of there. You know, the kind of guy who might ask you if you know how detergent works.
“You mean like what is the critical micellar concentration of SDS molecules?” I said.
He left me alone after that.
In Norway, I had a washing machine in my apartment. I don’t think there was a laundromat in the town, and I was living in the second biggest city in the country. Everyone had their own washing machine. Dryers were harder to come by, but it’s easy to get a rack and hang your clothes on it. You never have too many dirty clothes (although I have a problem folding up the clean ones and putting them away). And the best is, you can put your clothes in the washer and not worry about falling asleep.
When I moved back to the USA, I came to live in the South Bay on the west coast to be near family. I rented the perfect apartment. One that is on a main thoroughfare (I hate it when the motorcycles set off the car alarms), but it’s a small town without too much traffic. I had a garage space and a great view of the ocean. For a few days of the year, I could see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from my apartment. And it was my office. I still live in the same building but a different apartment without a view. That’s OK. There is a washing machine in the building.
The small apartment complex I live in has a washing machine and dryer for ten apartments. I work from home so I can do my laundry any time of the day. That still means being stuck with hours of laundry in successive washes and sometimes having to wait until someone else is finished which has gotten worse as rents rise. More people occupy apartments that are already barely enough space for one.
The only downfall used to be I always needed quarters. I could go over to the bank, just a couple blocks away, to get them. Easy enough. Then one day a digital method to pay for the machine appeared. Genius I have to say. If I think about it, of all the apps created, this one seems the most obvious. No more quarters needed. The system remained hybrid for a while, for a long while. I could still use my quarters. Then one late summer day, it was fully converted to the app Wash Connect.
Who wouldn’t want to use an app for a washing machine?
Me, I’m the one who doesn’t want to use the app. I’m up to my eyeballs in apps. There’s an app to pay for everything, as long as you are willing to connect your bank account to the app. I don’t much like connecting my bank account to every app out there. Money from your account is gone. An errant charge to a credit card can be dealt with. But the apps often have special fees if you connect them to a credit card. Once I got a fee of 30% of the money I had sent someone. After two attempts, I was done with Venmo.
But now I had this problem with the washing machine in our building. I refused to use the app, but it wasn’t so hard for me to object. The laundromat in town was only a five-minute walk from my apartment building. Because it was so close, I thought, I’m doing that.
I started taking my clothes to the laundromat and I got into it. I could load more than one machine at a time, and when my neighbor complained about the washing machine breaking down in our building, I wasn’t affected. Once you get into the habit of it, going to the laundromat makes sense.
But I’ve had to make an appointment with the laundromat every two weeks. I don’t deviate from this pattern, as once I do, I have too much laundry to bring to the laundromat. Some of my family even gave me a folding cart with wheels for my laundry days. And I had an excuse to read novels in the middle of the day.
Going to that laundromat lasted about a year. One day I walked over to the laundromat with my bag of dirty laundry and the laundromat was closed. I’d been there only two weeks before and then just two weeks later, all the machines were gone. Empty walls – something else was already going in there.
When I asked, a construction worker said, “A nail salon!”
I gave him an “are you serious?” look. Hair and nail salons occupy most of the real estate in town (?).
He smiled and said, “No, it’s going to be a pizzeria.”
“Phew, I guess.”
I left and took my laundry home where I considered my options. I could check out the other laundromat in town at 2nd Street or take the bus over to the town north of me. I went for the one easy to walk to.
The machines are older at the 2nd Street Coin Operated Laundromat, but there is a variety, including some taking larger loads or heavier items. I had to walk a little further, but it was less expensive than the one I had been using.
It’s not a joy to do my laundry (I suppose even if I had my own machine), but I do get to walk along the Strand on those mornings, with a huge bag on my back. I look like I might have joined the troop of the few infamous nomadic-living people in my area and bikes zoom past me in the pedestrian only zone, but I have a view of the beach and breathe in the Pacific Ocean air as I walk to the laundromat.
I’m happier on the way if I meet an artist acquaintance, a painter from Italy, who does plein air painting of local sites. I first met him near the Manhattan Beach Pier. He has the best and probably most effective business model I’ve ever seen. He positions a finished painting on the back of his easel (for sale) while he paints the new one. No videos needed and anyone on their way to the beach sees his work. No overhead, just positioning himself in a key spot where people will see him and his work.
I asked him once about social media. He wasn’t consistent with posting, but he shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t really need it,” he said, spreading his arms out, pointing to the obvious.
I speak a bit of Italian, and he’s that kind of Italian, as most are, who humor you and help you speak their language.
On my way to the laundromat one day, he asked, “You always have a backpack.”
“I’m on my way to the laundromat.” “Lavatrice” the word for laundromat I got to say.
“Oh, so you go to the laundromat and make a little exercise too.”
I might tell him I’m on my way to Italy in the fall. I might tell him my itinerary and then move on because I can’t think of anything else I know to say in Italian.
My target, 2nd Street Coin Operated Laundromat, is owned by a man originally from South Korea. He moved to the USA when he was 12 years old and has lived all over southern California. He’s there every day managing his business. Many people come in during my 45 minutes there, most to drop off their laundry and then come back for it a few hours later. If I had him wash my clothing, it wouldn’t help me. I still have to come back to get it.
The machines are old and many don’t work, but it’s just the right distance from my home that’s not too far, but far enough that I feel it in my muscles the next day. I’m done in 45 minutes because I don’t use the driers, a habit from my dryer-less days in Europe.
I’ll feel grown up (maybe it’s too late for that) – experience a luxury high – when I have my own washing machine. I don’t know if it’s an achievable dream as a single person in California, at least not near the beach. When people ask why I want to own a house, the main reason I state, is to have my own washing machine.
I can live without a dryer, but I’d love to have a washing machine. I do wonder why if I have a full size dishwasher in my apartment for one, I can’t have a washing machine instead. On the other hand, a trip to the laundromat is always an adventure.
A friend who recently moved to a home somewhere in the Midwest after living in an apartment in California for 25 years proves my point about having your own home. One of her first comments after moving into the home she now owns was “I get to do my laundry in my own washing machine.”
Books…
Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023)
An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)
Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square
Janice Nigro 
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