How to do laundry in college (and skip it instead)

Doing laundry in college is one of those skills nobody really teaches you. You get to your dorm, find the laundry room in the basement, and realize the machines take an app you've never heard of, half of them are broken, and your roommate's stuff has been sitting on the folding table for two days. Here's what we've learned helping thousands of students across DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia handle their laundry.

The basics, for the first time

1. Sort by color: whites, lights, and darks go in separate loads. A new red shirt with whites is how you ruin a wardrobe in one cycle.
2. Read the label. Anything that says 'dry clean only' or 'hand wash' should not go in a machine.
3. Cold water for almost everything. Hot water is for towels, sheets, and serious stains.
4. Don't overload the washer. If you can't fit your hand on top of the clothes, take some out.
5. Tumble dry low for most things. High heat shrinks cotton and kills elastic.

How long does laundry take in college?

Realistically, between sorting, walking to the laundry room, waiting for a free machine, the wash cycle, the dry cycle, and folding, you're looking at 2 to 4 hours per week. Multiply that by 16 weeks in a semester and laundry eats roughly 50 hours — over two full days a year.

Common mistakes

• Leaving wet clothes in the washer for hours (mildew smell — the worst).
• Putting denim, towels, and lightweight tees in the same dryer load (they dry at totally different rates).
• Skipping the lint trap (it's a fire hazard and your clothes won't dry properly).
• Using too much detergent — more soap means more residue on your clothes, not cleaner clothes.

When does paying for laundry actually make sense?

If you're a humanities student with light loads and a flexible schedule, doing it yourself is fine. If you're pre-med, in engineering, on a sports team, or working a part-time job, the math changes fast. A semester of professional wash-and-fold runs about $36 per week — and gives back roughly 3 hours a week. That's the cost of one fancy coffee a day, in exchange for an entire afternoon.

Most of the students we serve at AU, GW, UMD, Howard, Catholic, and Georgetown started by trying us once. The Try Once plan is $75 — exactly what one weekly pickup, professionally done, in your own dedicated machines, costs us.

The bottom line

Doing laundry well is a skill worth learning — at least once. After that, the only honest question is whether your time is worth more spent on coursework, friends, or sleep, instead of folding fitted sheets.