Boulder Laundry Project
Ok, before I begin, I want to say something to any girls that might be reading this: This project was done for humorous purposes only, and to give me something to write about on my webpage. In no way does this reflect my normal laundry pattern, or level of cleanliness. So please read this article with a smile! *smile*
So ok, I moved to Boulder on the 1st day of June and I already felt out of place. I mean, I moved here from Broomfield, only 15 miles away, but yet it's such a different world here. Boulder can best be described as "The People's Republic of Boulder". I think that this town still thinks it's in the 70's. So in order to make myself fit in, I immediately decided I would have to not wash my clothes for a very long time. Thus, instigating this project. How long can Toid go without doing his laundry?
Now, I have a lot of clothes. I mean *a lot*. My mother keeps buying me clothes from garage sales. I thank her dearly for it, but I now have enough clothes to outfit a small country. When I move, it takes me more than one trip in my Blazer to move my clothes ALONE. I need to donate a lot of them to the Salvation Army or something, but anyhow, back to the topic at hand. So I have a lot of clothes. When I was in college I perfected my technique. I would hold out for as long as I could, then go to do laundry, only to find out that I would have so many loads going at the same time, that I would forget which washing machines had my clothes in it! (I had so many I couldn't keep track!) To remedy this, I quickly came up with the idea of using post-it notes on my washes and do them at odd hours of the night, like at 2:37am. However, when I wouldn't be looking, somebody would either walk by and accidentally knock one off, or purposefully take one off, in either case, I would forget which machines had my stuff in them, and not notice I'm missing an entire load until it was too late! Another method of me losing clothes was my many trips ferrying my loads back to my dorm once they were done. There was no way I could possibly fit them all into one hamper. Or even attempt to drag them behind me up the stairs.
Now you have an idea of my volume of clothes. Back to the project. It started off just like normal. A week went by and I hadn't even made a dent in my clothes. Everything was fresh and clean and nobody knew the project had started. Another week passed and I had begun doing some of my specialized activities such as climbing, or mountain biking, which would require special clothes. After use, they would be put in the used pile, but they weren't really *dirty* yet, were they? :) The third week was probably the week when I would have normally done laundry, I pretty much had worn all my favorite pairs of clothes. No worries though of course, because I had half a million white t-shirts waiting to be worn, but come on, a favorite t-shirt is a favorite t-shirt!
Month One passed. I give myself an A+ so far. I was holding out strong. The thought of doing laundry hadn't passed my mind really. I had no detergent, and that was on purpose. I didn't want to have an excuse to do my clothes just yet. At this point creative fashion was my style. I would wear a collar shirt with umbro shorts, or shirt and 80's style jams. It was actually kind of fun to see the clothes I had. I would only suffer if I had to go bicycling. No padded shorts, I refused to put those on again, and I ran out of my special bike socks that fit in my special bike shoes. Oh well, I'll just stick to climbing. Week Five wasn't bad. I went climbing again, but this time I put on my pullover fleece and could smell the previous trip in it before I embarked on the new one. Oh well, nobody is perfectly clean when they go climb a 14er....right?
Week Six. My roommate Heather started to notice the giant piles of clothes on my floor. I refused to hang up dirty laundry, and my hamper was overflowing, so the floor was the only place that these clothes that could almost stand up deserved to go. Going to the gym to workout was getting fun too. My workout clothes stunk so bad by this point that I was wearing my pajamas to the gym not out of fashion, but out of the fact I was running out of loose fitting clothes. Week Seven was a good week, it went by really fast, I basically sat on the couch all week long, nothing major to report there.
Month Two. I made it! I give myself an A. This was starting to get fun. It became a game of picking up shorts (my lowest common denominator) to put on. Not very many of them would look appealing. However I was discovering that if actually would leave a pair of shorts alone for a week or so, the smell would dissappear and they would appear to be normal. My boxers were starting to grow short, and I knew they wouldn't hold out another week, which posed a bad sign, I already was wearing them multiple days, which is SOP when you go backpacking, so it's no biggie, anybody could do this as long as you don't leave skidmarks. Haha. Week Nine I forgot which socks were clean and which socks were dirty, and none of them would feel good on my feet. My other roommate came home and was apalled at my mess. My clothes were starting to have stains on them, and I was walking around the house without a shirt on just because I was tired of the thought of having to open up a new suitcase of clothes for this project. I was beginning to get tired of everything. Week Ten basically reduced me to swimsuits. No shirt. No socks. No underwear. Just swimsuits. Everywhere I went was in my swimsuit and sandals. If I got cold I could put a blanket over me, but luckily it was the middle of August, so things were very hot.
Week Eleven. I couldn't take it anymore. I gave up. I don't know what it was that finally drove me to go to the store and get detergent and wash my clothes. But I did. I cannot tell you how many loads I did. It took me three days to do laundry. In the time I did laundry, Mark and Heather both did laundry and had to move my loads in and out of the way to do so. After doing my laundry, I was quite amazed at how fresh everything was. I was seriously petting my clothes because they felt so soft. Almost as if I had never felt anything so soft and comfortable in my life before. Heather was proud of me. Mark didn't say a word. I think he was disgusted from the beginning. Heh.
Sorry I don't have pictures of this. From now on my projects will contain pictures to make them more interesting. Basically all you missed was a messy floor, (which can easily be re-created, trust me), a few stained shirts, smelly clothes (which a camera couldn't pick up) and one hell of mess by the washing machine and dryer when I finally ended it.
Boulder Laundry Project Results: 76 days, (or 2.5 months)
Toid's Comment's: Not bad, but I could have done a lot better. I'm dissappointed in myself.
--Matt
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