I got a clear and up-close reminder of how much laundry my family does in a week when our washing machine broke down on Tuesday.   I also got a serious look at how people can be robbed blind by washing clothes at a laundromat.

We were upstairs eating dinner when I thought I heard the dryer buzzer going off in the basement.  But it was a longer buzz than normal – about 15 seconds.  I went downstairs and the dryer was still going, but the washer was silent.  I pushed the knob in and then pulled it back out.  Nothing.  I opened the washer.  It was full of water and clothes.

I checked the breaker box, but nothing had been tripped.  So I turned the washer off and put in a call to our home warranty company for a repair.  Later, I turned the washer on, just to check.  It ran through the full cycle and I put the clothes in the dryer.  Pushing my luck, I started another load of laundry.

After filling up and beginning to agitate, the horrible buzzing went off again, and this time I smelled hot electric ozone nastiness.  I turned off the machine and unplugged it, and took all the clothes out and piled the sodden mess in a basket, tilting it on its side to drain into the floor drain.

I felt lost – the dirty clothes piled up all over the laundry room and I was powerless to do anything about it.

Thursday, the repairman showed up and collected his $60 service fee.  It turned out that our 14 year old Amana washer (which has NEVER had a breakdown or service issue) had a frayed belt, shot bearings, and the seals on the tub were leaking, causing moisture to short out the motor, which was completely fried.  The repairman managed to run the motor long enough to spin the water out of the  machine, and then tallied up what it was going to cost (not us, the warranty company) to repair the machine.  All told, it would be just under $300.  The parts had to be ordered, so we’re looking at February 6 before the repair will be done.

And it will be a doozy – there will be two guys here, who will have to turn the machine upside down and essentially rebuild it inside.  The warranty company offered to just credit us with the $300 so we could replace the machine, but there’s no way I can get as good a washer for $300 as we have now, even if it is 14 years old.  It’s built to commercial specifications, with a huge stainless steel tub and is an absolute workhorse.  With the repairs, they say we’ll get at least 5 more years out of it.

So today, I gathered up all of our dirty clothes and towels and cloth napkins and dishtowels and wash cloths.  I stuffed clothes into pillow cases (three of them, full) and baskets (three of THEM full).  And I took out to the car the basket of  still-wet (and now nastily mildewy smelling) half-washed clothes that had been in the washer when it broke down.

Rabbit packed up markers and paper and I brought my knitting project, and we set out for a nearby LaundryLand, where I planned to use the commercial triple-load machines to get our laundry done all in one fell swoop.

First of all, I haven’t been in a laundromat in years – in fact, it’s been seventeen years since we have had to put coins in any laundry machine.  So I was appalled that it was $3.50 to $4.00 to do one load in the triple-capacity machines.  I asked the attendant how many minutes a quarter would buy in the big dryers, and she told me five minutes.  So I decided we would wash the clothes there and dry them at home.

I used four triple-load machines and one double-load machine.  I spent almost $20 just washing clothes, but they were all done in less than half an hour.  I used my homemade powdered detergent, which made absolutely no suds at all, and even the stanky clothes that had been moldering in the basket for three days came out smelling fresh and clean.

At home, I hung at least three baskets of clothes on the line, since it was about 40 degrees, windy and sunny outside.  In the basement, I put a load of clothes into the dryer and then hung jeans on the drying rack, delicates on the little round clip-hanger I use, and then hung dish towels and shirts on hangers around the downstairs shower bar (which goes to the basement shower area next to the washer, which has not been used for showering since probably the 1970s).  I did this to pre-dry the clothes, because the laundromat machines strategically don’t spin the clothes quite as well as home machines, in what I believe is an attempt to make you spend more on the dryers.

HOLY HELL, it was a long afternoon.  I’m used to doing one or two loads of laundry a day, just keeping up with what’s down the laundry chute.  This was a marathon of changing out loads in the dryer, folding, putting on hangers, running clothes upstairs, and putting away towels and linens.

I went outside and gathered the clothes from the line at dusk, and they were still slightly damp, and freezing cold.  They didn’t take as long in the dryer, fortunately.  Right now, the very last load is tumbling away.

There were families at LaundryLand doing their week’s wash, and I can’t fathom how much they must spend in a year on washers and dryers, as well as the giant jugs of name-brand detergent they were using.  One elderly Vietnamese man was washing blankets in the triple-load machine and I think he used eight ounces of liquid Tide.  No wonder a third of their machines are out of order.

If we did all of our wash at the laundromat every week the way other families have to, we’re talking about at least six loads of wash a week – even if we used the triple capacity machines, that’s $12 a week (separating the whites, the colors and the reds, which is our usual method).  Drying the clothes would be about $2.00 per 40 minute dry time, multiplied by four machines to distribute the clothes efficiently, and that’s $8.00 to dry the clothes.  So a minimum of $20.00 a week to wash and dry a standard amount of clothes.  Many times, we have even more laundry than that, since we use cloth napkins, wash our sheets and bath mats and so on.  But even conservatively estimating $20 a week means that in a year, we could spend over $1,000 at the laundromat!

Seriously, the cost of doing laundry every year on its own should convince people to buy a washer and dryer with their income tax returns instead of buying a big screen TV.  I know some of these folks live in apartments without laundry hookups, but some live in houses.

It’s no wonder the poor stay poor.  (I say this because I know – we’ve been there and occasionally go back there when times are lean).  Thank God our machine will be fixed in just over a week and we can go back to doing laundry on our own time.

I read an article a while back about how expensive it is to be poor:  how you might only be able to afford a crappy cheap item when you buy something big, and then it breaks down so you have to  replace it.   I see the laundry situation fitting right into that.  Someone lives in an apartment and they do their laundry in coin-0p machines….how many budget experts think to factor in the cost of keeping clothing clean?  I’m willing to bet not many.

One of our ongoing expenditures is our home warranty.  It is $40 a month, but covers appliance breakdowns and our furnace and central air, some plumbing and electrical malfunctions.  It has paid for itself almost every year, just in repairs to our fridge, our dryer twice, our dishwasher, etc.   Since our income fluctuates so wildly, we consider the warranty to be a form of insurance against the inevitable:  something breaks down when we can least afford to have it fixed.  In another year or two, we’ll be able to get rid of the warranty after we’ve replaced our furnace and our water heater and our kitchen range.  Until then, we are holding onto it.  It sure helped us out this past week.  Meanwhile, our plan is to start socking away the equivalent of the warranty payments into savings to build up an emergency fund for these kinds of repairs.

Of course, we had an emergency fund in 2011: we just had to use it for living expenses.  Let’s hope 2012 shapes up to be better than 2011.

Now, go hug your washing machine.  And if you don’t have one?  You really should think about changing that.