Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: clothes washers

[Nancy Morehouse (nmorehouse]

Wolf Creek Lodge has 30 condos and about 40 residents.  2 households have their 
own washers.  Our Laundry has two sets of stacked large Washers and Dryers.  
And a third smaller dryer.  All equipment is replaced by our reserve funds.

As a result of COVID we have sign ups for 3 hour time frames for each household 
on a weekly basis.  We communicate if we are done early or not using our time 
slot.  It works very well.  We usually don’t have forgotten laundry problems 
but with the signups we usually know who has laundry there.

We don’t charge and do provide unscented pods and a few other laundry products. 
 The room and machine care is generally handled by one person.

Nancy Morehouse, Grass Valley, CA

> On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:19 AM, Jay KapLon <jay [at] kaplon.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Aug 25, 2022, at 2:49 PM, Maraiah (Lynn) Nadeau <welcome [at] 
>> olympus.net> wrote:
>> 
>> If your membership is reliant on shared laundry facilities, how many 
>> machines do you have, for how many people?
>> Is that enough?
> 
> We have 55 households and about 100 people. We have 3 large-size washers and 
> electric 3 dryers.
> 
> It seems that about half the units have their own washer and dryer.
> 
> We do not charge on the thinking that the main costs of laundry are heating 
> water and the water itself, which are being heated and used whether used in 
> the communal machines or private machines. (This is somewhat flawed since it 
> doesn’t account for electricity or leasing costs, but it also saves 25 pairs 
> of machines from being created and the climate impact cost of that.)
> 
> The 3 pairs is basically enough. We have the usual issues with people 
> frequently leaving laundry in the washer or dryer and use 3 “move it along” 
> baskets to remove completed loads from either washer or dryer.
> 
> We did see some great laminated cards at a Boulder cohousing that said how to 
> dry a given load of clothing that one would leave on the washer. That way any 
> neighbor could move your load to the dryer and start it for you correctly. It 
> was great. Our community failed to emulate it sadly and backed up laundry is 
> still an issue.
> 
> We have a group of 2 people who manage the laundry, but pay a janitor to 
> clean the room along with the rest of the common areas.
> 
> -Jay
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