It's been a few years since I've had to use a Laundromat. Even since I've moved into an apartment without a washer & dryer I've been doing my laundry at the house of a generous friend. But my friend is out of town & someone I don't know is house-sitting. I could conceivably waltz in there and do my laundry anyway... but I don't know that I'm up for that much awkward.
Fortunately there's a laundromat not far from my home. A few years ago I was driving 30 minutes to do my laundry. I lived in an apartment with no washer/dryer hookup. The landlord conveniently owned a laundromat across the street. There no storage space either and the landlord conveniently owned a u-store-it across the street. These things gave me pause, but the bigger issue was that the dryers in the landlord-owned laundromat burnt people's clothes. Not mine, but my roommate's clothing came back visibly singed. Next closest laundromat? Two towns away. Oh Indiana.
The laundromat is over-priced and wildly inconvenient, even when it's nearby. You can't leave and generally, if you're me, you can't talk to anyone because everyone else is speaking Spanish. Unlesss of course I need to tell anyone, "the princess is crying in the bathroom." Rosetta Stone = Fail. But, one thing about the laundromat is that it's actually a decent place to sketch, because what else are you going to do?
I have never witnessed kids racing in the laundry carts, though there are usually a few of them playing hide'n-go-seek or tag. But if you were a kid, wouldn't you want to play in the laundry carts? My family never did laundry at the laundromat, but I feel fairly certain that my sisters and I would have tried this.
