Laundry Room Fascism II

Now I am back on one of my favourite topic of hatred, the laundry room fascism! Since I now live in a very typical (although very unusual to me) Swedish standard house with rented apartments I am now personally affected. When I first moved in and went down to book a time I was shocked to see I could not get a time in three weeks!! There are two washing machines and 36 apartments that share them. That should not be too bad, but since the day is divided in three bookable blocks per day whereof only one actually is an option for people with a normal daytime job, there are not so many options left. (I even discovered that people who work are further discriminated as the two daytime blocks are five hours whereas the evening block only four!!!) And if you then, as I, don’t spend your weekends here, there are two days less. Maybe you also have some meetings or other appointments during the week and you are in big trouble and there is no room to be spontaneous. I think you can understand than one does not want to miss a booked time. But still I refuse to let my life be governed by the laundry room fascism!

Today I had booked the laundry room from five to nine in the evening, but then a colleague asked if we should play tennis. Dilemma, I really didn’t want to say no to tennis, but as I am going on holiday next week I also really needed to wash. However, the tennis court is close to where I live and I booked it from six o’clock which meant I could go home and start washing to show my neighbours that I really was using my time (if you don’t someone else normally is allowed to use it after an certain time) and then leave it while playing tennis. When I came to the laundry room I saw a note from a neighbour (kindly) asking if she could wash after me when I was ready and left her phone number. First my egoistical me thought; what the heck, it is not my problem, if I have booked until nine I can be here till nine, but of course if I am ready earlier I can give her a call. But on my way out I met the neighbour in question and then my “real” kind and soft me took over and suggested that I just finished this first one and then she could wash between six and eight o’clock, while I was playing tennis. She was very grateful and happy. We were chatting for a while and complained about how difficult it is to get the time to wash. She agreed completely and added…”especially when you have three kids..” So I guess I felt kind of stupid, standing there with my tennis racket and my luxury problems…