When it comes to academic productivity in college, most students are pretty good about completing work on time. Educational institutions establish academic deadlines as early as the first grade in an effort to drill organizational habits into the malleable minds of young disciples. Eventually, children learn to integrate structural behaviors into their daily lives.
There seems to be one area that will always lack in organization: laundry.
Students typically have begun to procrastinate doing laundry even more so than their homework. Why is the sporadic task so easily dreaded, specifically at Pace? It just so happens that there is a laundry list of reasons.
“I very much dislike having to walk so far to the laundry room,” said junior philosophy major Quadry Harris.
The distance between laundry rooms and most dorm rooms makes the task of washing garments even more unappealing for Pace students. Lugging weeks’ worth of clothing down the stairs of Martin or up to the second row at the houses is what makes an otherwise hop, skip and a jump seem like a journey to Guam.
“It’s bad enough to have to walk outside the house in the cold,” said junior accounting major Tyler McHugh. “What’s even worse is getting to the laundry room just to find out that all of the machines are broken.”
Many students are frustrated by the fact that more often than not the machines in the laundry rooms are undergoing repairs, rather, should be undergoing repairs. There are four washers and dryers in almost every laundry room at Pace. The inconvenience of a single broken machine cuts down the functioning appliances by twenty five percent, leaving students with only three functioning machines at a time.
Three machines per dorm is not enough to help students stay on top of the chore.
“There used to be three laundry rooms at the townhouses,” said junior criminal justice major John Manzo. “It’s really inconvenient for the townhouse community.”
The newly established Residence Assistants’ office took the place of the third townhouse laundry room last summer. Residents of the townhouses now have eight washers and eight dryers. These machines are expected to service the 280 residents often leading to a battle among students.
Laundry pushes our body’s limits, testing not only strength in the mass transportation of clothing but also agility. Being able to quickly reach to the washers is crucial when competition gets stiff. As with any competition, there are quitters – some Pace students take a brief hiatus. The next round of battling competitors is then faced with a sopping pile of a stranger’s laundry staring them in the face.
“People tend to forget their laundry in the machines way after their clothes are finished,” said junior applied psychology major Josh Molyneux.
Granted, it’s easy to get caught up in other activities while waiting for the laundry cycle to finish, but it seems more often than not that there seems to be leftover clothing lingering in the washer.
“We’re not supposed to touch anyone else’s things,” said junior psychology major Nadya Hall. “We’re then left with piles of wet clothes and nowhere to put them.”
One of the downsides of dorming is faring the frequent inconsideration of neighbors, an experience that lucky commuters avoid.
Clearly complaints of laundry are not unwarranted. Some may blame failure to follow through on laziness. All things considered though, the lack of energy post laundry is enough to drain a toddler on a sugar high. Being that there are no elevators in the dorms and the fact that the old dumbwaiters that some of the buildings do have are completely non-functional, it is up to the individual himself to transport his or her own laundry.
When you feel like you need to get your blood flowing but don’t feel like making a trip to the gym, consider doing some laundry. It will without a doubt give your muscles a run for their money and leave you feeling fresh, and fly, like a Downey champion should.