Why I Love New York Wednesdays: Laundry service.

It's been a really busy 10 days since I've been back home after the holidays! I barely have time to put 2 thoughts together! Hopefully things will slow down soon so I can share some more interesting tidbits with you about the latest goings-on in the young professional world of NYC.

For the 2nd installment of Why I Love New York Wednesdays, I want to share something that I realized very quickly after I moved here: It's actually cheaper for me to have the Korean laundry joint across the street do my laundry than for me to do it myself. For the first 2 months, I was doing my laundry in my building's basement (I guess I am lucky enough to have a laundry room in my building) and was spending an outrageous amount of money on a single week's laundry in the coin-operated machines.

See:

2 loads in the wash machine: $6
2 loads in the dryer @ 45 minutes each: $8
Laundry detergent ($8 divided by 25 loads): $.34/load
Fabric softener ($9 divided by 100 loads): $.09/load (x2 for each week = $.18)
Special dark wash laundry detergent for dark jeans, etc. ($15 divided by 25 loads): $.60
---------------------------------------
=$15.12/week

Not to mention, the 3 hours I spent sitting in the weird, dimly-lit, soapy-smelling laundry room. Now, I noticed that other people in my building would leave their clothes unattended and run back up to their apartments while their things were in the machines, then come down after 45 minutes or whatever to just change them to the dryer. So, as my building seems pretty safe and everyone was doing it, I tried this for a few weeks.

Until an entire load of dark clothes, including my favorite Red Engine jeans from college and a beautiful jewel green Kenneth Cole ruched t-shirt, was stolen.

That was the last straw for me. And that's when I discovered the Korean laundry across the street, Reliable Laundry & Cleaners. And man, have they been reliable! It's one of those laundries that charges you by the pound for your laundry, so depending on the week and the number of towels in my laundry bag, I usually spend $8-$12 total. I drop it off at 8 a.m. on my way to work, and pick it up at 6 p.m. THE SAME DAY on my way home.

It's magical!

There's a place like this on practically every block. If you haven't found yours yet, keep looking. Or come check out my Koreans on 73rd street. Every week, they separate my clothes into lights, darks, and colors, wash my lights without bleach (I hate the smell of it!), use extra fabric softener on the towels per my request, and neatly fold everything and put it back in my laundry bag for me to take home and leave on my floor for 3 days before I decide to actually put things away.

So, yes, I love New York because there is guaranteed to be a laundry service (or two) on practically every block in a primarily residential nerighborhood that will do your laundry for you for cheaper than if you did it yourself. And the nice Korean man knows my name now, and I have absolutely no problem with him folding my delicates.