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.