The other day, my daughter had an accident in her bed. She has one of those, big, puffy beds piled high with linens…so I pulled them all off and then realized that the comforter did not come away unscathed. There was no way I could fit that thing into my washer at home so I decided to take it to the nearest laundry facility which is at the bottom of my hill.

Let me tell you. It has been a LONG time since I’ve visited a Laundromat. That last time I needed one, was wayyyyy back in the ’90s. You had to have coinage (and lots of it) to buy those little boxes of soap and to pay for 10 cycles of drying because let’s face it, nothing ever dried in the 15 minutes that your 25 cents bought you. They had those ridiculous carts with that bar at the top to hang your clothes.. like anyone ever did that. They never had a sink around either and the restroom.. ugh… don’t even want to go there. It was a linty, dusty little hole.

When I stumbled into the Laundromat by my house..I was amazed. It was pretty and clean and had tables and a snack bar. It had free WiFi and an arcade and a clean restroom. The horrid change machines were gone and replaced with refillable Laundry Cards that you purchase with your credit/debit card. The most amazing thing though, were the washing machines that washed 8 loads AT ONCE. Yes, at once. Can you believe that? You could wash an entire week’s worth of clothes and not spend the entire day there. Then came the dryers. I thought..this is where they get you, but no..the dryers actually worked in the 20 minutes that my $1 bought me.

I took a look around.. young people using their laptops, reading while sipping their coffee. I could not believe how much had changed since the 90s. Now if only I could buy a commercial washer like the one above, my life would be so much easier.