Laundry virgin no more!!!

~Idiots-guide to doing your laundry in America~

Today, I did my laundry for the first time here in NYC. I felt like a fish out of water! For your info, Americans do their laundry very differently from how Singaporeans do. For one, they don't hang their clothes out to dry like how Heartlanders in Singapore do by hanging them on bamboo poles stuck through little pods outside their HDB windows. Americans dry their clothes and fabrics using huge dryer machines in a laundry room. Okay, let me backtrack a little. I'm sure some of you are familiar with how they do laundry here, but for the benefit of those who don't, please be patient while I explain the process. 

Firstly, you gather all your clothes in a laundry hamper that looks like this (hee, this is mine...super bo liao of me to snap a photo of it):

Alternatively, you can put them in a laundry bag that resembles one of those drawstring nylon bags. According to Mrs Shin, my landlady, the laundry hampers are very popular here. Some of them I found in the store have sorters (basically different compartments) for you to put your whites, colors, delicates, etc. separately. Some are more elaborate or made of tougher fabric. 

Next, you take your laundry to a laundry room. Most apartment buildings should have such facilities in their basements. If not, there are public ones, or laundry services available. The basement in my building has a laundry room, and in that room there are several washing machines, dryers, and laundry carts for you to put your laundry bags/hampers in. 

You can't use the machines for free; they require some form of payment. At UCLA, where I did my student exchange, I had to slot four quarters (that's 1 US dollar) into the washing machines at my dorm, each time to be able to use them. Back then, I always had to save my quarters (coins approximately the same size as Singapore's 20-cent coin that is equivalent to USD 25-cents) so that I had enough of them to do my laundry. Over here, I use a card with a magnetic strip that can be topped up. And each time I want to use the machine or dryer, I have to slot the card into the card-reader. Each washing cycle costs me USD 1.25, and if you want a super cycle (which I have no idea what the different is!) it costs 50 cents more. Each drying cycle costs 50 cents. If you are obsessive-compulsive about separating whites from colors, and delicates from non-delicates, etc., you might want to put them in different machines, and that means more money!! Looks like I'll be thinking twice about the clothes I buy and wear from now on. 

After loading the machine and making your payment, you select the time of washing you want (they have different settings for whites, etc.). And walah! Just wait for close to half an hour for your clothes to be done, come back and load them into the dryer. The dryer has its own settings for the amount of heat you want (i.e. high, medium, and low). It will spin for 15 minutes. And most of the time, your clothes will still be a little damp like how mine were today. You can choose to dry them in the dryer for a longer time or hang them up to dry naturally like how I did cos' I didn't wanna pay additional cost! 

Okay, this sounds like a boring thread. Sorry folks, running out of topics I guess. But this was something I found interesting. According to Mrs Shin, Korea is pretty similar to Singapore in that families own their own washing machines and hang out their clothes to dry. Haha, things are really different on this side of the world, even day-to-day washing can be so disparate! I really miss the convenience of using a washing machine in Singapore. Back home, I can just dump my clothes into my washing machine without paying a cent, and hang them to dry on bamboo pools when they're done. And most of all, back home I have my mum!!!! Haha...

There's no moral of the story attached to this posting. At least I can't find one for now. But all I can say is things are real different and it takes a little getting used to. I guess it's fun discovering new things and trying out stuff. And it probably helps me cultivate a form of independence I don't develop in Singapore.