The Laundry Conundrum

I've noticed a strange phenomena among British students: before they go home for a break, they always do their laundry! This seems very unintuitive to the American student. To go home means good food, no work, and a suitcase full of dirty laundry. Among my friend in Berkeley, there were many who went home specifically to do their laundry. It was a littler harder for me, home being six hours away, but when I did go home, I remember packing suitcases full of dirty clothes. On one occasion, even the clothes I were wearing were the least dirty out of everything.

Yesterday, I went to the laundry room to do my laundry. I needed to do it since spring break was shortly approaching and as I will be travelling for several weeks, I needed to make sure I had the right clothes to travel with. However, this past Wednesday afternoon, the laundry room was packed. It was the laundry rush hour. Everyone was doing their laundry before going home and I heard several students mention they had to do it before they caught their train that afternoon. I was extremely perplexed.

Another thing I have yet to figure out is the laundry code of law here. In my dormitory in Berkeley, when someone's washer or dryer was done, you waited at least 10 minutes before unloading it and then you would put it in their basket, which was normally sitting on top of or next to the machine. Yesterday however, I arrived five minutes after my laundry was done and found it heaped in a pile on the bench in the middle of the room! They hadn't even bothered to put it in the empty dryer overhead. There are always bizarre stories with college laundry (one of my friends had all of his underwear stolen from the washers at Caltech), but generally there's an unwritten courtesy. And no one really wants to touch a strangers 'delicate' items.

I have yet to find out the reasoning behind this British phenomenon of laundry. But when I do, it will be another mystery of British academia unsolved.