Dirty Laundry

We all have it but some choose to deal with it differently than others- usually trying to hide it. No matter how hard you try to hide it or how hard you try to forget about it all together, at some point it must be dealt with.

No, I am not talking about skeletons in our closets; I am simply talking about dirty clothing.

Moving from hotel to hotel, our dirty laundry has mostly remained in bags or in a "dirty laundry" suitcase. I never realized how easily I had it when I had a washer and dryer of my very own.

Here in Singapore, if you do not have a place of your own, you have two options. You either have the hotel do your laundry for a very expensive rate, or you send it to a laundromat (who will not do socks or underwear due to sanitary purposes).

Getting laundry done... easy, right? One sure would think so! You think that you just bring the laundry in, they do the laundry, and you bring it home. If it were only that easy...

I decided that since I don't work, I would rather take it to have it done (about half the price), saving us some money, rather than having the hotel do it. And that's what I did on Monday. All. Day. Long.

Since I did not have a cell phone at this point, Jason was very hard to contact. He was especially hard to contact on Monday because he had a business lunch to attend. I woke up and knew of one place that did laundry a couple of blocks away. I decided to walk over there and look at their rates. It cost $6 to wash one shirt. I wanted to get a second opinion so I walked around and found another, closer place in the mall right next to our hotel. They charged $5 per shirt. I could see the savings already. By the way, the hotel rate is more than double that! Anyway, I talked to the sweet lady for a while, explaining that we had a lot of clothing that needed to be cleaned (about 3 weeks worth) and asked if she could give me a discount. She said that she needed to see how much I had before she agreed. She told me that she could have it done by Sunday night but I had to get the clothing to her before her lunch break at 2pm. I looked at my watch and it was 12pm. So, I left the mall and ran upstairs and frantically started to collect all of our dirty clothing and put it into a rolling suitcase. I took the suitcase downstairs and went to the mall and down the escalator to the laundromat. The lady's eyes bugged out and she said "Wow! That's a lot of laundry!" Told ya so! Anyway, to see how much it would cost, we had to separate each item and pull out the socks and underwear. 36 shirts, 9 pairs of shorts, 6 pairs of pants, 8 t-shirts, 1 skirt, and 1 dress later... the discounted price was S$238.50($171.72 USD). WOWSERS! She said that I would have to pay her cash right away. Since I was not sure if this was what Jason wanted me to do, I loaded all of the laundry back into the suitcase and went back to our room to call him. I called his cell phone- no answer. I called his work- no answer. I emailed him- no answer. I went back down to the lady (laundry still in tow) and told her that I could not contact Jason and wanted to talk to him first. She told me that the laundry would need to be back in less than an hour if I needed it done by Sunday. Knowing that we are going to Malaysia next Monday for about 10 days, I knew it would have to be done by Sunday at the very latest. I began to get frantic... and very, very irritated. Mind you, with the humidity it feels about 106 degrees here. I told the woman that I would hurry and try to call Jason again. I asked her kindly if I could leave the laundry there this time and told her I would be right back. She could see that I was flustered and unwillingly agreed. I ran back to our room and called Jason again. No answer. No response to my email. I told myself that I would call him one more time and that if he didn't answer, I would just have her do it. I called Jason one last time and he answered... Hallelujah! I explained everything to Jason and he told me that after all that, we would need to laundry before Sunday and that we probably shouldn't have the laundry done there. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be relieved or angry after all the running around, sweating, and strange looks from the makeup consultants in the mall (who repeatedly tried to give me samples, saying "hi again", every time I ran by. Ha!). That night Jason and I agreed that we would just have some necessary items washed by the hotel. You don't even want to know what that bill cost. The laundry arrived back to our hotel that evening, clean as a whistle. But here's the kicker- Tuesday we get a call from the real estate agent and learned that the landlord agreed to our offer on our condo. Jason signed the new lease to our new place yesterday and we move in today. So, after all of that, I finally get to do our laundry! I don't think I've ever been this excited to do laundry in my whole life (nor will I ever be this happy to do it ever again, so don't hold your breathe!)!

Moral of the story- be thankful for what you have.

The end.