The Thompson Strategy for Collegiate Laundry

Or, How to Get Your Saturdays Freed Up at BJU!

1. Find an accomplice. Laundry done via the TSCL is only successful with a friend.
2. Set your alarm Friday night for 5:30AM. The optimal time for weekly laundry is 5:30AM Saturday. This is also the most incredibly difficult time to pry oneself away from the comfort of the bunk bed, especially if the laundry room is located on a route involving outdoor travel. SAFETY HAZARD WARNING: Failure to arise at the first "beep" of your alarm clock on a Saturday morning is punishable by a severe beating administered by angered room-mates. Use of an alarm clock snooze feature on Saturday mornings may be punishable by death. You've been warned...
3. Brian and I would get up at the earliest allowed hour of 5:30AM and stagger to the laundry room. At that time, it's possible to place all 2-8 loads of laundry into 2-8 separate laundry machines, pop in the quarters, and let 'em churn away. Also, considering that most thieves are by nature lazy, you're laundry is quite safe at this unthinkable hour on a weekend. We used the Reveal dorm laundry, which was accessible only from outside the dorm. The Johnson dorm laundry room, though larger, is frequently occupied even at this early hour, mainly because its occupants didn't have to go outdoors.
4. Next, return to your dorm room to shave, shower, and get dressed in something that will "check" sufficiently to get you into the Dining Common.
5. At this point, it should be about 6:45AM. Return to the laundry room and transfer all 2 - 8 loads into 1 - 4 dryers. Fire them up simultaneously, and proceed to the Dining Common for breakfast. Breakfast is served from 7 to 7:30AM on Saturdays, and sometimes it's the best breakfast meal of the week.
6. After breakfast, return to the laundry room and retrieve your dried laundry. Iron the ironables in the laundry room, or in the dorm room of whichever of you has the most available room, where "available" is determined by the number of room-mates who have either vacated or achieved consciousness by the time you return from breakfast. Ideally, one of you will have room-mates who have left for the morning already, or who are awake doing something non-critical (computer gaming, etc) at this hour.
7. Complete all folding and putting-away of clothing by 9:00AM. At this point, you have completed one of the most tedious chores of your college life before most of your peers are even aware it's Saturday.