The Laundromat Paradox: Requiem for the Fabric Softener Sheet

What do laundry and societal entropy have in common? Rude Chicken has arrived with the breakdown.

Photo by Bianca Jordan on Unsplash

Upon the tablet of the Statue of Liberty, it is said to maybe be written:

Give me your pants, your cardigans, your crumpled and questionably stained pillowcases that have seen things they can’t unsee.

The oversized comforters that would destroy your overpriced washers and make your wallet sore.

Come for our bounty of torn shirts and lost socks, all yours for free.

We may have run out of toilet paper last week, so just use what’s left on the floor for more!

As a Chicken that holds extensive credentials within the realms of literary excellence and haute couture, it should be no big surprise that I appreciate a fashionably turned phrase. The big surprise should be that Lady Liberty herself had the sheer foresight to see and celebrate the virtues of one of the world’s last bastions of performative equality.

The laundromat.

Look, regardless of what rank of the caste system your local laundry facilitator falls in, they have something in common: Machines that are routinely filled with the collected transgressions of the literal unwashed masses, lint traps overflowing with lint comprised with a non-zero percentage of pubes, and the ubiquitous ever present “Out of order” signs.

99% of the time, that sign is on the bathroom. 99% of the time, that bathroom has no paper products. Is it actually broken? 99% of the time, no one really knows.

But what we do know is that fabric softener sheets are a form of olfactory violence. The most domestic of domestic violence inflicted by the unconscious depreciations of the great laundry overlords. Scents like “Generic flower and mild depression” or “Moonshine and Suburban lawn clippings.” Do they even stop static cling? What IS static cling anyway? It’s not like there’s any shag carpet or balloons in the dryer! And I sure as hell don’t do my laundry in socks. I do them barefooted, toenails unclipped, wearing flipflops like a real adult. We don’t do crocs over here. We’ve discussed this. And like crocs, the real disgusting thing about fabric softener is how much it costs. Crappy scented tissue paper that you can buy at $1 dollar stores, or at your super luxe galleria bougie distributors for grotesquely inflated prices. For what? Just to throw in the machine so they can ghost fart their essence into your clothes. You know what works better? A Shower.

Go wash those buns.

Shave that back hair.

Use soap.

Maybe water.

You’ll smell better immediately, so you won’t need to have your laundry perpetuate the lie for you anymore. This isn’t a rant about laundry, my friend. This is a TED Talk about personal accountability. Especially since you better count those quarters. Those little beige bastards will shortchange you every change they get! Give em a $20, and in return they give you $19.75. It doesn’t matter if your wallet has the single $20, or a whole FBI watchlist compound of them. They took that quarter and are going to force you into some Faustian bargain to get it back… maybe. Go fill out a slip and drop it in the wooden box like they tell you, and someone will get back to you eventually. But you know what? They won’t. They’ll make you do a solid sweatshop day’s worth of work for that refund.

We all go to a laundromat at least a few times in our lives. The giant overfilled comforters that’d shred the belts on your washer at home. Those of us who had the landlord who lied about the laundry situation at the apartment. A pile of dirty clothes that prompt more questions about our decision-making skills? Yes. As an entire society we go to the laundromat hoping to come out with less. But if we checked the receipts, we’d find that we don’t just pay the price in money. We pay the price in ourselves.

-RC