I’ve been to the laundromat before. When we lived on Craggy Ave in West Asheville, my mom would bundle my sister and I up and take us to Dutch Girl Laundry on Haywood Road. Although my mom was a mere five years older than I am now, she had about ten times the responsibility. My sister once stole the car keys, and we had to walk all the way home to get the second set, only to find the keys at the bottom of the vending machine. Not that I really remember any of this—I just liked to stare at the ceiling fans turning around.
Now none of us live in West Asheville anymore and all of us are blessed to have in-unit laundry. The true selling point (or renting point) of my Chicago apartment was the washer and dryer, at least in the picture we saw of them online. Before moving in, I printed out the picture and framed it. When people visit and ask why the heck we have a framed photo of our in-unit laundry we get to say, “Oh, cause it’s our favorite part of the apartment!”
While I am delighted to have access to clean clothes whenever I want, a tiny part of me has always wondered if I am missing out on the True Chicago Experience (see: lugging bags of clothes two chilly blocks and arriving rosy-cheeked at the warm, cotton-breeze-scented lavanderia to wash my clothes). It’s not the first time I’ve romanticized going to the laundromat.
About six years ago, my friends and I saw a laundromat photo shoot on Pinterest and became obsessed with recreating the pictures. There is an album full of us giggling as we tried to stand out of the way of people actually trying to wash their clothes, sitting in the rolling baskets or the XL dryers. We didn’t pay much attention to the Asheville locals, the families, or the young twenty-somethings who I more closely resemble today. Even then, though, we weren’t there for the intended purpose.
But back to 2024: one day, it happened. Our dryer broke. We made do as best we could—after all, going all the way to the laundromat seemed like a big deal when we were sure our landlord would fix it quickly. Flash forward two weeks and I am out of pants.
I scrounged up about two dollars in quarters and gathered up all my pants: black cords, tan Eddie Bauer outdoors pants that I thrifted, my Banana Republic jeans that remind me of my mom, my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans (another thrift find I will brag about any day), my red sweatpants that make me feel like Santa Claus if his sweatpants were too small. After washing them I dumped them—damp as hell—in one of my reusable grocery bags and trekked over to John’s Lavanderia. It smelled even more cozy and clean than I could’ve imagined. I walk by it everyday, but this was my first time inside.
Just like Dutch Girl Laundry, twenty-five cents a dry. I dumped all my pants in the dryer, sat back, and word-vomited this essay. By the time I finish this, my pants will be dry. I’ll take them back to my apartment where the appliance repairman is currently fixing our dryer.
Of course I could have waited three hours for our dryer to get fixed. If I had waited, I would’ve missed out on the True Chicago Experience. But I also would have missed out on what was happening inside the laundromat I pass every day: the children watching Spanish kids shows on the TV, their mothers laughing and talking while washing, still within eye and earshot, on the woman from Wagner’s Bakery across the street coming through with a box of baked goods for sale.
Chores are annoying—laundry especially. I love my in-unit washer and dryer—I have the pictures to prove it. But I have a deeper appreciation of the communal ritual of laundry that exists right around the corner.
Carlisle Patete (‘22) came to Calvin University from the mountains of North Carolina and graduated with a double major in film & media and creative writing. After brief stints in Los Angeles and Chicago, she now resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she enjoys sweet tea on her front porch and identifying every tree and bird she runs into on any hiking trail.
