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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Jumbo Steps: It's time you wash that shirt

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I spent $13.50 on laundry yesterday, partly because I hadn’t washed my clothes in a while, but mainly because it’s about damn time I did.

You see, I decided to launder the heap of dirty clothes growing slowly in the corner of my dorm room because, if I’m going to procrastinate on my homework, might as well do something productive, right?

I loaded three washing machines' worth of clothes ($4.50) and shlepped those three soaking loads into their three respective dryers (another $4.50).

Now that the washing machines were empty, I was able to do a fourth load; the blanket I needed to wash wouldn’t fit with the clothes I’d already crammed into the machines from the previous loads (another $1.50).

I went to check on the dryers 55 minutes into their cycles. Two of the three the dryers were doing their job. Good. But the third was not. Because I’d put my clothes in one dryer but paid to operate the one next to it.

As a result, I had to fork over another $1.50 to dry my third load in a dryer that was actually going to dry my clothes and not just the air that was inside it.

By this time, the blanket was ready to be dried. Oh, joy! There goes another $1.50.

All in all, I slaved over my clothes for about three hours: washing, drying, sorting, folding and putting away my laundry. And it didn’t help that this was after having back-to-back-to-back classes. I was mentally exhausted from classes and physically exhausted from trekking up and down those wretched Tilton stairs between my room and my clothes.

I find it comical that of all things, it was my laundry that waved a red flag in my face. Somewhere between writing essays and studying for midterms and attending club meetings and keeping in touch with family and overcoming personal obstacles, I’d neglected to attend to basic tasks like doing my laundry. I’d been working in overdrive, at the cost of ensuring I had enough clean clothes to wear.

It may seem that pushing off laundry duty is an excusable act, since I’m doing something more worthwhile, like academic work. But it really isn’t. What I mean is the pile of dirty clothes in my hamper, although seemingly less important than the pile of papers in my backpack, still needed to be attended to.

It is key to frequently clean your clothes, even if it gets expensive at times — especially since no one can see how big your pile of clothes is when it’s hidden behind a bed and tucked in the corner of a room.

We all wear clothes. We all have to wash them every once in awhile. Especially during these stressful times of the academic year, it’s important to remember to air your dirty laundry.