It's a wash

Most college students have lived roughly a fifth-of-a-century, and a fraction of them still can't or won't do their laundry. Depending on their proximity to home, some students will horde dirty clothing until it's time to go back, thus creating piles of epic proportion.\nDavid Hill, owner of Campus Laundry, said students who do their laundry at his store frequently try to overload the machines in a comical effort to get the most for their quarters. The scheme ends up being counterproductive and costly when their clothes are neither washed nor dried thoroughly enough the first time around. \n"We try to help them out," Hill said. "We'll say 'Look, we know you're trying to save a buck, but there's a cheaper, better way to do laundry.'" \nCrosstown Laundry Owner Marty Stephens said men are typically the ones in need of the most assistance.\n"They're always trying to ask for some of the female customers to guide them through their first washing experience -- and they're serious," Stephens said.\nStephens said two bewildered-looking parents came in last year with an inordinate amount of laundry. They had come to IU and found out that instead of doing laundry, their son had just kept buying new clothes and underwear during the first month of school. \nMales are not the only ones who can be laundry incompetent, Stephens said. He once had to intervene when a woman tossed her clothes and detergent in the dryer in an effort to "wash" her clothes.\nThe most common mistake he's seen is people not separating white and colored clothing, which results in an interesting blend of secondary colors.\nGraduate student Dave Miller had a unique approach to separating clothes, until his girlfriend witnessed his method when they went to a laundromat to do 12 loads of his laundry.\n"He started pulling his stuff out of the laundry bag and putting colored stuff together in different washers," senior Grace Overmyer said. "I asked him what on earth he was doing, and he said he was separating his clothes into 'socks, underwear, shirts, pants…'" \nHill said having a successfully stain and shrink-free trip to the laundromat requires only a basic knowledge of how to do laundry and the ability to read cleaning instructions.\nSome bypass this tedious and time-consuming process by taking advantage of the drop-off service offered by most laundromats.\nFor around 85-cents a pound, students can have everything done for them. They get their clothes sorted, washed, dried, pressed and folded.\nSophomore Jacob Eben said the service is well worth it, even though he has to cough up $30 to $40 on his biweekly trips to the laundromat.\n"I'm just too lazy," Eben said. "And it's also a matter of time. Last year I always did my laundry, but this year I didn't want to have sit and wait two to three hours for it to finish."\nSophomore Andrew Schlachter said he knew how to do his laundry but was too "nervous" about messing up and ruining his clothes.\nThe stereotype of all guys not being able to do their laundry was described as "semi-accurate" by sophomore Christine Liguzinski, who said it's not that most guys can't do their laundry, it's that they're just not motivated enough.\nGraduate student Guy McBride said he learned to manage this simple task when he was 12 years old and that it is a necessary skill to have in college. \n"I think it's sad that there are some people from regions of Indiana that don't know how to do their laundry by now," McBride said.