Born out of a desire to compensate the Modern Beau for letting me cohabitate without paying rent (I’m still paying a mortgage on my house some 200 miles away), I went against the modern gal grain and offered to do his laundry while he was out of town for the weekend.

Because the Modern Beau has about twice the amount of clothing I have and rarely ever hangs his clothes up after he’s worn them prompting me to automatically assume they’re dirty, he had a freakishly large laundry pile. Two and a half baskets full, in fact

Since I also needed to do my own half basket of laundry, I decided to drive to the nearby laundromat where I could use multiple washing machines and dryers over the course of two hours rather than spend my entire weekend doing load after teeny-tiny load in his inefficient/not always functioning properly washer and dryer. I figured it would be an adventure, having not visited a laundromat in about five years.

I’m here to pass along a bit of financial wisdom to you if you’ve not already figured it out:
BUY YOUR OWN WASHING MACHINE AND DRYER.

I ended up spending $18 to do three loads of wash and two loads of partial drying and came out smelling like I’d spent two hours at a bar. No amount of money I put in the dryer was going to completely dry my clothes (and did I mention I live in a state where ALL workplaces are supposed to be smoke-free?) and wanted to get on with my day.

Assuming I did that every week for the entire year, I’d have spent $936, plenty of money for a fancy and efficient new washer/dryer set. Even if I only did laundry every other week, I could at least afford my own efficient dryer. And not smell like smoke.