The College Student’s Guide to Laundry

Before I begin this post, there are a couple things to note: If I’m giving unsolicited advice, it’s probably 1) terrible and 2) not to be taken seriously. If I’m asked to give advice, it may still be terrible, but you can at least take me seriously. This post falls under the first category of advice (that of unsolicited nature).

The first step in doing laundry is deciding whether or not you need to do laundry. This can be determined using several methods. One: the ratio of clothes in your laundry basket/floor to clothes in your closet/dresser is undefined. Two: You have no clean socks. Three: Your cleanest pair of pants has grass stains, mud stains, and an indeterminate food stain.

Once you have determined that you do in fact need to do laundry, move on to the next step. Gather everything that needs to be washed. Take your laundry, detergent, and method of payment to the laundry room. In your laundry room, proceed to throw all your laundry into a washer and add detergent. Sorting is unnecessary because your entire wardrobe consists of jeans* and t-shirts. Pay to start the washer, then choose the one setting that’s been allowed to remain on the washer (dark colors, colors, whites, etc.). Since you didn't sort your laundry, choose colors.

Wait forty minutes, then return to rescue your damp and presumably cleaner clothing. At this point, throw all your laundry into a dryer, pay more money to start the dryer, and choose how warm you would like your clothing at the end of the drying cycle. Your options are hot, very hot, and superheated.

Another forty minutes later, it’s time to remove your clothing from the autoclave dryer. Depending on which heat setting you chose, you may or may not need protective gear to collect your clothing. At this point, you can bring your freshly laundered clothing back to your room, where you have between one and three days to fold everything.

Indicators of laundry success include: articles of clothing coming out of the process the same color as they went in (hey, at least the stains didn't get any worse, and now they’re clean stains), everything smelling better than it did before laundry, and not losing any socks.

*I actually don’t own any jeans, but I still don’t sort my laundry.