Life Lessons While Doing Laundry

This weekend I had somewhat of a millennial moment. I desperately needed to do laundry but the one washer for ten apartments in my building would mean my laundry would take hours upon hours to do, and I needed to watch some football for my fantasy team. So, in typical millennial fashion, I tried to find the quickest way to get my laundry done. The answer? The laundromat.

So, I set my alarm for 7am on a Sunday and sprung right out of bed, which in itself is a miracle, and drove to the laundromat.

Now I’m not sure if this is a guy thing, or just a me thing….but I don’t separate whites and colors. Now you may be saying to yourself is this guy crazy, and you might be right, but that just takes up more time out of my day. Again, you may be saying to yourself, “typical millennial.”

Let me defend myself for a few seconds here. I have been doing my laundry since I was eleven years old. That’s right, I was learning to load a washer five years before learning how to drive a car. This was because one morning my mother asked me to pick weeds in her garden. I responded along the lines of saying that it isn’t my garden, not my smartest decision. My mother responded along the lines of saying it’s not her laundry, and thus started my laundry career.

In the chaos that was me trying to find as many washers as I could to minimize my washing time, I took a second to look around the laundromat. I saw a family of five trying to load about five washers all at once. I saw a man in a Buffalo Bills jersey clearly trying to get laundry done before football just like me. I saw a father washing princess sheets and pro wrestling blankets, and I saw an older gentleman sipping on coffee reading a newspaper. This laundromat was full of people from all walks of life trying to smell nice (at least for a few days).

As I stood back and observed all that was going on around me I realized that I rushing through my laundry was the last thing I should be doing. Every single person in that laundromat had the same goal, to wash their clothes, but I was the only one concerned about rushing into the next thing in my day. The man reading the newspaper was catching up on that days events, something I had yet to do. The man in the football jersey was putting his family’s priorities before his and his loyalty to his team. The family trying to fill five washers at the same time wasn’t just doing their laundry, they were spending quality time together. They weren’t yelling or getting frustrated, they were talking and laughing together.

All these people were taking their time and just taking in every moment.

I needed to do the same as these laundromat patrons. I needed to slow down a little bit and relax. So I took out my phone and sat down at a table. I caught up on the news of the day, I texted an old friend, and then called my parents. It was a nice relaxing experience. The laundromat surprisingly made me appreciate the time I had on my hands.

It also helped me not be the smelly new guy at The Hawk.