After two years of owning my own washer and dryer, I guess I have been spoiled not having to drag my dirty laundry to a public facility. My husband and I have recently moved to Staatsburg, NY, and this was going to be our first trip to the laundromat. We figured we should check out a local facility. We were recommended to use the Laundry Basket located on Route 82 in Stanfordville New York. My husband said we should go into Hyde Park to use a laundromat we knew, but I wanted to have faith in our new community laundromat. Was I surprised when we got there!
The exterior to the building was appealing, and well lit since we arrived around PM on a Friday evening. I was also delighted to see that their was a local pizza shop directly across the street. My husband unloaded our pick up truck, and we lined up our laundry bags to choose our washing machines. At this moment is when we realized that the majority of the machines had black sharpie messages stating that they were broken. My husband called the service number located on a sign with the Laundromat rules. My husband was told that the machines had been fixed, and that we were safe to use them. I started to look around the laundromat, and noticed that all the food and beverage vending machines were also empty!
We were able to find six machines that were clean enough to load with dirty clothing. The remaining machines either did not open, were full of dirty water, or still had not completed a previous cycle. We loaded the six machines that were available, and realized that we would needed to wait for the first six machines to finish, to be able to complete our laundry. The machines were very small, probably no more than 15 to 20 lb machines. It was three dollars for the three top load machines, which needed constant supervision to catch the rinse cycle for the fabric softener. The other three machines were front load, and they were $3.75.
Noticing the cost of the washing machines made me start to wonder about the cost of the dryers. The first washing machine was finished, and I quickly placed the clothes in the first dryer I found without any sharpie messages. It cost 50 cents to start the machine, and to my surprise it only gave me eight minutes. This immediately sent me into a laughing frenzy since I am used to paying a quarter for atleast eight minutes. I quickly added one additional quarter, so I received 12 minutes for 75 cents! I decided to wait and see how the machine worked before adding any of my other clothes to the dryers. After the 12 minutes passed, my husband stated that we were leaving, because the clothes weren’t even warm!
We combined the remaining dirty laundry to one bag, and started filling the other laundry bags with our clean wet clothing. One of the top load machines left such a nasty sulfur smell on our clothes that I needed to re wash them when we made it to another laundromat in Milbrook, NY. We also spent an additional 75 cents to receive another laundry bag to keep the smelly clothes separated from the others. After my husband opened the box from the vending machine, he noticed that he was even ripped off with that purchase. He paid an extra quarter to receive a stronger bag with handles, but instead received the cheap bag, that didn’t have any handles.
My husband could not understand why I continued to laugh uncontrollably, but I told him that if I wasn’t laughing that I would most likely be crying. We wasted so much money on this trip, but our evening was spared when we made it to the Milbrook Wash and Dry. This was a very clean location, and they had a variety of machines available that all worked! That is where I will be going for now on. I still can’t believe that we were ripped off so terribly in a laundromat during an economic crisis. We must have spent over twenty dollars at the Laundry Basket, without any satisfaction. This is a warning to other’s looking for a Laundromat in a new area. I would recommend checking out the facilities before you arrive with all of your laundry. In this economic crisis we can not afford to waste money on places that are not being taken care of. Good luck, and Happy Washing!
