Laundry room fascism

Ha ha ha, this is hilarious!!!

Some of you might have heard me lamenting about the Swedish laundry room fascism. Now I have taken that one step further!

For those of you who might yet not be familiar with the phenomenon of Swedish laundry room fascism I will give you a brief introduction. (I will try to keep it brief, for this is a topic I can go on for ages about!). Well; the laundry room fascism mostly hits the urban population of Sweden. The main reason is that most city apartments are not equipped with a washing machine. And as most apartments, and hence the bathrooms are rather small, people do not normally have one installed. Therefore the majority of people living in apartments are forced to use the common laundry room, normally located in the basement of the house. These rooms themselves are not the problem; they are normally modern, clean and well equipped with a couple of washing machines, a tumble dryer and a drying cabinet or some other drying device. The thing is that you of course have to share these rooms and machines with the rest of the tenants, that is; your neighbours.

This interaction with your neighbours is actually another story, that I also could write loads about. In many houses in Swedish towns and cities this is actually the only contact you have to your neighbours, so it is kind of sad that it is restricted to angry notes about un-removed fuzz in the tumble dryer, fights over exceeded washing hours and stolen or missing clothes. I for one have a real phobia for laundry-room-witches, I can assure you; there is at least one in every house. And they are mean!

However, that is not the subject for this story, here it is about the time one has to book for using the laundry room. Often you only can book for two to four hours at a time. Considered the fact that most people work Monday to Friday until, let’s say six o’clock; that you are normally only allowed to use the room until ten and depending on the ratio tenants to washing machines, this can mean you might have to book the room two weeks in advance! This of course means that if you have booked a time, you don’t want to miss it, as that might mean you have to wait another two weeks to have your clothes washed. That, again, means that people plan their lives according to available times in the laundry room. This is the laundry room fascism! The availability of laundry rooms, rule peoples life!

You will notice this if you try to make an appointment with someone living in an apartment in Stockholm. These are examples of typical conversations
.
-Hey, long time no see! What about a drink after work today?
-No, I am sorry, I can not. I have the laundry room.

-There is this great class at the gym Wednesdays; would you like to join me?
-Oh, I’d love to, but you see, I normally book the laundry room Wednesdays, so I really can not.

-They say the whether will be nice this weekend, what about a trip out of town?
- Sorry, I can not. I have to do the laundry.

And then, if you finally manage to get an appointment with some of your friends, booked well in advance (presupposed you don’t have a booked time in the laundry room yourself!), you are sitting in a bar, having a good time, chatting and catching up and considering if you would order another drink, then you can be sure there is someone who has to leave to go home and take care of the laundry! This is what I call laundry room fascism.

Now you might get very surprised if I tell you I will miss going to the laundry room. I just found out that the key to the laundry room, where I am staying right now, happens to be in Congo!! This means I will have to investigate something I haven’t done before. I will have to find out if there are any launderettes in Stockholm. This far I have never had to use one and for me this is something out of a British movie by someone like Ken Loach or Steven Frears. But, hey, maybe that matches my life as homeless and unemployed! And to be honest I think it is a bit exciting. Just think of all the interesting people I might meet there, that I for sure would never have met anywhere else. In the movies they are always very funny and spiritual. Maybe it is even a good place to catch a date! Maybe I will meet the man of my life at the launderette! Wow wouldn’t that be romantic! I promise you, I will keep you updated.

Well, I continue my way of “borrowing” other peoples lives. This time in Stockholm. I somehow started to get a bit restless in the country side. Or…, rather actually I didn’t. I got completely comfortable. Really started to like life as unemployed. There you are never alone, there are always people around, which I like, and there are always someway you can make yourself useful (hence the working on the roof!) and it seems somehow quite normal not to go to an office every morning. You also don’t need that much money so not having a regular income is not so worrying. But somehow I realise it will not work in the long run. Therefore I am now in Stockholm borrowing an apartment from a friend who is abroad. It feels bit strage to stay here. I have only been here two or three times before, and then there always was a party! But the appartment is quite close to where I used to live so it still feels kind of like home.(I am not really borrowing his life though. Don’t worry Johan if you read this :-)).

Here I will be more inspired to look for a new job. Here I will soon get bored after a while. As all my friends are working it does not seem as normal not to work. And seeing your friends in the evening and everything you do here somehow is connected with a cost, so you will soon start missing an income. But I have to admit, it was quite nice to have a slow breakfast and then go for a long walk in the park before going back and sit down in front of the computer.

But to everyone who starts worry that I am getting lazy and living off you, the working part of the people, I will just say, as some way of justifying myself, it has only been two weeks and considering that I really haven’t had much holiday this year I think that is ok and this far I am still supporting myself!

At first I didn’t know why the hell I called this blog Normal life. I have never felt really comfortable with the concept of “normality”. Now I know! Normal life is of course the Swedish Goodrun version of Paris Hilton’s and Nicole Richie’s Simple life! You know, from the glamorous jet set life of international diplomacy to a life as homeless and unemployed on the Swedish countryside! :-)

Odd things happen here too! Yesterday I found myself at a countryside auction and found myself buying a HUGE chest of drawers with a mirror on top of it. Exactly what one needs when one doesn’t even have a home of your own! Well, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the piece of furniture was built by my great granddad we wouldn’t have bought it and it will be placed at my parents’ place for a start.

Those auctions are quite an interesting phenomenon. There you really can find anything and the people you find there are also rather fascinating. Many of them are pretty old but nevertheless witty. I overheard a conversation between two octogenarian men talking about repairing clockworks and an old acquaintance who used to do that. The one man explained that this man had died, the spontaneous reply from the other man was: “then there is another lady available!” Today the same auction hall appeared in a TV-series!

Today I found myself in another interesting and completely new situation. First of all I had to drive a horse transport to pick that chest of drawers up from the auction. For all the years I have spent with horses and riding I had never driven a transport before. No crashes or scratches! Yhohooo!

The most interesting was however that I have debuted as a roofer. I have spent the whole day on the roof of my sister’s house, helping my brother in law removing the old roof cover and replacing it with new. I have never done anything like that before, but I must say it was quite fun and I think the result was quite good. However I am not sure if I will be able to get out of my bed tomorrow, my whole body feels rather sore.

Well as you see, I don’t really need a job, but I could do with an income. So I guess I will soon get started looking for a job. Soon! Cheerio!