Cling

Ahh, the laundry room of our small apartment complex. My love/hate relationship with said room. I enjoy having multiple washers and dryers to get stuff done quickly, and I know I might miss that when I am in my own house with just one machine. (Nah. Not really. I won't miss it at all.)

The funniest thing about sharing washers with a dozen or so other people is that EVERYONE else uses chemicals and we do not. This was particularly obvious to me today when I went down to the dungeon, soap nuts and baking soda and quarters in hand, to be faced by a whole array of almost-empty bottles of Tide with Downy on the utility shelf.  It's hard to guess why. There are multiple plastic jugs of nearly-gone goo on that shelf at all times. It's like that's where detergent goes to die instead of getting to the landfill (ocean). Being thrifty, I would use the last of it all, but I don't put smelly clingy chemicals in my laundry anymore. Did someone leave those bottles there because they will use the last of all of them? Like I used to do... filling them with water to get the last nasty bits and every last penny? I thought I would hasten the process for whoever left these there by emptying all the dredges into one bottle.

Now, I NEVER used Tide back in the day. I find it to be way overpriced. So being in such close contact with it was a new experience. I'm older and wiser and I see even more clearly how they get us. I put a little water in the bottle to swish it around then transfer from bottle to bottle. Imagine my surprise when I notice that a little water really doesn't do it at all. There was still SO much product stuck to the inside. I swished more. There was no getting that crap outta there. Now, they charge you for this part too. But you can never use it. And the fact that it clings so disgustingly to the innards of the disgusting plastic bottle... think how it clings to clothes. To skin. To cells. And then it clung to MY skin, just from handling it a little. I washed them and they still reeked of all those chemicals.

Well... I don't know why all those nearly-empties were there. I doubt the owner will thank me much for trying to consolidate said bottles. I enjoyed re-learning why I like that my clothes smell like nothing. And that I am not wasting money on built-in waste, designed specifically by the company who makes the stuff. (You do realize, of course, that the lines on the measuring lids are completely misleading, right?) I'll dream of my own washers that will never know the ick of chemicals within their shiny parts. Hell, maybe I'll go back to the hand-crank thing. We already air-dry a lot of our clothes, by-passing the dryers that stink of other peoples' dryer sheets...

Nah. Those new machines are just too pretty. I'll still look longingly at them in Home Depot until such time as I can be fascinated by my own in my cozy clean bright SMELL-FREE laundry room...