Seventh Entry: Laundry Room Monopoly
As humans, our natural sense of hygiene can overcome us the same as hunger, thirst, and certain natural desires. As such, our need for clean clothing may overcome our sensibilities and fill us with greed, anger, jealousy, and all other shallow emotions with which our instincts may plague us. However, we rarely do see the subtle forms in which such feelings appear.
One of the more ridiculous manifestations of human instinct is the lock on the laundry room door. Said lock is, when you think about it, merely a barricade to inconvenience the tenants. This claim may see ridiculous, but how would one argue it? One could say that it is to keep homeless people from barging into the laundry room and washing their clothes; but how many homeless people would spend their scarce amounts of money on laundry instead of food, water, and booze?
In newer apartment buildings (and other such forms of housing), landlords monopolize their tenants' hygiene by giving them one washer and dryer for every six apartments. enforcing this miserable ratio can be used to explain the locks; but lets just face it, people are too proud and, I dare say, too comfortable in their laundry rooms to use anyone else's, no matter how desperate. I'm sure anyone could admit to the fact that their small, unpleasant laundry rooms feel warmer and more comfortable than a friend or stranger's cold, desolate laundry room.
It is this form of territoriality that may cause our neighbours to leave their clothes in the washer and/or dryer, and get angry at us when we move them. Indeed, there are rules of laundry room etiquette which instruct us to tell us when to move our laundry from machine to machine; when to take it out of the room altogether; and tell us what to do when such rules are broken by others. However, some people think that those rules are for "other people". Naturally, these are not the people from whom you would borrow a key when you lose yours.
This is why many people find it more convenient to go to a laundromat, even if they have a clean, spacious laundry room with state of the art washers and dryers. Despite the inconvenience, however, most of us are drawn to our home's laundry rooms. It is most likely not because of time or distance in many cases; but the fact that the laundry room is an inviting and important part of our homes, even though they are communal.
Is it not human nature to take what is ours, and keep it protected from others? Would you feel quite right about being able to walk into a communal laundry room without a key? And has humanity not evolved into a mind-frame where greed, monopoly, and territoriality is thought to be normal and healthy?
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