![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienRespecting the sidewalk-closed signs adds about half a mile each way to my walk to the grocery store. I had to do it twice today -- once for regular groceries, and once for laundry detergent and a couple of things I forgot the first time. On the last return leg, I cheated and picked my way carefully over the two short sections of sidewalk that are actually missing. I hope it won't take more than another week to sort out the rest of the work.
Then I did four loads of laundry, and reflected yet again on the failure of the cycle-labels on the washing machines to match my reality.
The machines have cycles for Colors, Bright Colors, Whites, Permanent Press, Delicates, and something else I forget. Many of my clothes -- both because I still have plenty that are more than nine years old, and because I usually buy some more when I go home -- are from the UK, where the labelling and the washing machines are different. I don't do whites as such, though I have some things that are white, and I barely do bright colours at all, but I have lots of American clothes that want the cold-water cycle, mostly in muted or neutral shades but some light (white or beige) and some dark (brown or black or purple). These cause some consternation to my mother, as British washing machines don't do cold-water cycles. So the things that back home would have gone in program 4 (50 degrees C, normal wash) go in the 'Colors' cycle, the program-5 (40 degrees C, slightly gentler wash) things go in the 'Permanent Press' cycle even though very few of them have pleats these days, and the cold-water stuff gets separated into light and dark loads and goes in under 'bright colors.' (I gave up on the 'delicates' cycle because it doesn't rinse properly.) I sometimes wonder whether the cold-wash things would in fact survive a British 40-degree cycle, or the 40-degree things come clean in an American cold-water cycle, but I haven't experimented.
After the wash cycle, everything gets picked over and re-sorted according to whether it wants tumble-drying on medium (basically the 'colors' load), low (about half the cold-water stuff, but orthogonal to light or dark, and some of the 'permanent-press') or not at all. I don't know how I'd manage all this if I had my own machines and could only do one load at a time; I've been doing the parallel-processing thing for so long that it's hard to imagine doing it any other way. About ten to twenty per cent of the time, the driers fail to actually get things dry, but that didn't happen today.
The management periodically encourages people not to leave their laundry unattended, but as there isn't actually space to hang around in the laundry room, or anywhere to sit, this is widely ignored. I try to pick up my things fairly promptly, but it doesn't always work out.
Unlike some of my neighbours, I don't spend ages in the laundry room carefully folding everything as it comes out of the driers; I bundle it all in a sheet and get it home, where I dump it on the couch and deal with it at my leisure. (I'm no good at folding anyway.)
Then I did four loads of laundry, and reflected yet again on the failure of the cycle-labels on the washing machines to match my reality.
The machines have cycles for Colors, Bright Colors, Whites, Permanent Press, Delicates, and something else I forget. Many of my clothes -- both because I still have plenty that are more than nine years old, and because I usually buy some more when I go home -- are from the UK, where the labelling and the washing machines are different. I don't do whites as such, though I have some things that are white, and I barely do bright colours at all, but I have lots of American clothes that want the cold-water cycle, mostly in muted or neutral shades but some light (white or beige) and some dark (brown or black or purple). These cause some consternation to my mother, as British washing machines don't do cold-water cycles. So the things that back home would have gone in program 4 (50 degrees C, normal wash) go in the 'Colors' cycle, the program-5 (40 degrees C, slightly gentler wash) things go in the 'Permanent Press' cycle even though very few of them have pleats these days, and the cold-water stuff gets separated into light and dark loads and goes in under 'bright colors.' (I gave up on the 'delicates' cycle because it doesn't rinse properly.) I sometimes wonder whether the cold-wash things would in fact survive a British 40-degree cycle, or the 40-degree things come clean in an American cold-water cycle, but I haven't experimented.
After the wash cycle, everything gets picked over and re-sorted according to whether it wants tumble-drying on medium (basically the 'colors' load), low (about half the cold-water stuff, but orthogonal to light or dark, and some of the 'permanent-press') or not at all. I don't know how I'd manage all this if I had my own machines and could only do one load at a time; I've been doing the parallel-processing thing for so long that it's hard to imagine doing it any other way. About ten to twenty per cent of the time, the driers fail to actually get things dry, but that didn't happen today.
The management periodically encourages people not to leave their laundry unattended, but as there isn't actually space to hang around in the laundry room, or anywhere to sit, this is widely ignored. I try to pick up my things fairly promptly, but it doesn't always work out.
Unlike some of my neighbours, I don't spend ages in the laundry room carefully folding everything as it comes out of the driers; I bundle it all in a sheet and get it home, where I dump it on the couch and deal with it at my leisure. (I'm no good at folding anyway.)
