Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING-L digest 542 One more re: LAUNDERY QUANDRY!.....

[Kate Adams (mseuphor]

If I remember correctly from my days in a college coop, the downside of
this system is shrunken sweaters, faded and running colors, "tie dyed"
underwear, perfumed laundry soap causing rashes, and a whole host of
laundry disasters.

As I understand it from Joani Blanc, it doesn't work this way at
Emeryville, anyway.  Doing each other's laundry is a nice, cooperative,
neighborly concept, in theory:  however, it suffers from implementation
problems in practice.

It is best to stick to folding the neighbor's laundry if it is coming out
of the dryer and you want to put yours in.  Otherwise, put erasable marker
slates on each machine listing the occupant and phone extension so that
people may be contacted to move up their laundry (or asked "how do you want
your load fried?").

One more hint:  have more dryer capacity than washer capacity.  It helps
throughput since dryer cycles are generally substantially longer than
washer cycles.  Three dryers for every two washers is a good ratio, but you
may want to time it out yourselves (I'm not sure how long front-loaders
cycle for compared to top loaders).

Kate Adams
Cornerstone Cohousing

At 09:35 PM 7/3/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Daer Folks,
>
>Perhaps we are taking one laundry  factor for granted others aren't.  It is
>The Laundry Concept from the Katie & Chuck slide show .... i believe that's
>the source.
>and it's this:  if machines are in use, you put your LAUNDRY Basket in
>line..... 
>if a machine ahead has stopped, put the neighbors into or out of the
>drier.......and eventually it all gets washed and dried, tho, as i recall,
>folding did not happen!!!
>
>The beauty of this is that one does not have top endlessly wait
around...etc.,
>unless that is a pref...  
>and, it's kind of a fun idea!!!
>All Best,
>Ruth Hirsch, Cantines Island, Saugerties,NY
>
>



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