This is the way we wash our clothes…

wash our clothes, wash our clothes. This is the way we wash our clothes, living in New York City!

At our apartment, we don’t have facilities to do washing other than by hand. In fact, our rental contract specifies that we are not allowed to have a washing machine. So this means we either drop our clothes of at the laudromat for their ‘wash & fold’ service which costs 95c per pound of washing, or you do it yourself. We’ve done a bit of both, depending on how the week pans out, but boy, it sure is a lot cheaper to do it yourself even at $3.25 per (small) load! Plus, I know that my whites and darks are not getting washed together!

There is a pretty nice and large laudromat near us, called the Clean Rite Center. I can’t say they have the friendliest staff, but when I keep to myself and try to avoid them, we don’t affect each other. It is the closest laundromat to us, but is also by far the most modern and clean I have seen around here. So we like it.

The other day I thought I’d take some pictures so that those of you with your very own washing machine and dryer/washing line at home can remember to be thankful for it. :-) And I’m very thankful that I don’t have to do my laundry by hand!

Having a little helper makes the job a bit more interesting, for both her and for me! And just for the record, I’m not being sarcastic — she really is getting very helpful!

So, we load the clothes in the machine:

And the supplies:

And then we run an errand like going to the post office across the road, or the supermarket on the next block, because we have 25 minutes to kill.

Then we come back and load the washing into the dryer.

This is the cheap part. I usually do 3 loads of washing, and they all fit into just one dryer which costs a total of 40 cents for 40 minutes, which is all that is needed.

During that time we go to the playground. I have no idea what we’re going to do once the weather gets too cold for this. Read lots of books, I guess.

Then we come back, dump all the washing into our big yellow laundry bag, put it in the wire cart and go fold it all at home. You can fold it at the laudromat too, but kids are easier to entertain at home.

And for those who were wondering, I push the stroller with one hand and pull the wire cart with the other. It works, trust me.