As I mentioned earlier, we were traveling across Europe on a two-week trip that involved too many cities (courtesy of my FOMO—previously documented), and every imaginable mode of public transportation: flights, trains, buses, and taxis. Which is a long-winded way of saying: luggage space was limited.
Now, I’m still a long way from traveling in a manner that would make Rick Steves proud—with just a backpack—but I did make progress. I pared down my outfits considerably—a feat that required a substantial mind shift. It meant I wouldn’t be prepared for, say, a blizzard (yes, it was peak summer), or a tornado.
It also helped that I’m not Instagram-savvy, nor do I feel compelled to plaster my image digitally across every monument, meal, or pebble I encounter. Probably because, as my daughter says, I couldn’t take a decent selfie if my life depended on it.
The point is: fewer clothes = the need to do laundry on vacation.
And no, I’d rather leap out a window than wash my clothes in a hotel sink and spend the night with wafting damp laundry smells. Even I have standards. Plus, hotel rooms already come with their own mysterious scents.
And I’ll admit, I’m too cheap to pay for the ridiculously priced hotel laundry. There is no clearer sign to me that laundry is a universally detested chore; otherwise, why would they make it so expensive that so few people actually use it?
What this meant was that I meticulously penciled in a couple of laundry stops into our itinerary and ensured our hotels were strategically located near laundromats. While most people scour TripAdvisor reviews for cleanliness, service, or breathtaking views, I was obsessively typing “laundry” into the search bar—probably tripping the search algorithm and possibly confounding the hotel marketers.
Six days into our trip, I arrived at our first scheduled laundry stop, armed with enough dirty clothes to test the limits of an industrial washer. I had budgeted exactly 1 hour and 43 minutes for this glamorous chore. So, imagine my shock when I walked in and found fourteen other people already waiting… on six machines.
I stood there, perplexed, trying to decipher the line situation and how to work the coin-operated machines (the instructions seemed very clear—in Spanish). Someone came up to me and animatedly explained what I can only assume was laundromat etiquette. I nodded along, pretending to understand, while internally repeating the only Spanish I’ve mustered after two decades of living in California: “No hablo español.”
Still, language barrier or not, I know how to recognize a lost cause when I see one.
Thanks to some quick thinking by my family and the beauty of technology, we managed to locate a full-service laundromat close by that offered to wash, dry, and fold our laundry for 17 Euros. I contemplated cancelling the rest of my itinerary and settling there forever.
That didn’t happen, of course. We carried on exploring for four more days before my next tryst with laundry. This time, I had specifically booked us into a hotel that proudly advertised its own guest laundry floor. Score!
We checked in. I waited a few minutes, just to be polite. Then, giddy with excitement, I grabbed the bag of dirty clothes and headed off to give them their spa treatment.
What awaited me was… underwhelming. Six petite washers and dryers. I’d had higher hopes for the advertised “laundry floor.” I found one empty washer, loaded it up, and got the cycle started. This time, having learned my lesson, I had cleared my schedule for the entire afternoon. There was only one item on the agenda: laundry.
I came back 45 minutes later, ready to move my clothes to the dryer. The dryers were all occupied and spinning away. Just as I was bracing myself for yet another laundry letdown, a fellow American tourist, looking equally despondent, walked in with two other people, I assumed were her daughter and husband.
“We’ve been trying to do laundry all day. These machines are the worst. They’re nothing like our dryers back home,” she said. Then paused and asked, “Do you speak English?”
I nodded. She continued, relieved to have an audience.
“I ran the dryer for two and a half hours, and the clothes are still damp. I’m now air-drying everything in the room and heading down to reception to see if they can give us some hangers.”
Her husband looked defeated, and her daughter had the vibe of an exhausted elementary school teacher managing a classroom full of difficult toddlers. One thing was clear from their expressions: this was not the vacation they had envisioned.
As they closed the door, I started to panic. But I quickly slipped into that place of delusional optimism. The one you turn to when the writing is clearly on the wall, yet you convince yourself you’re the exception and that things will work fine just for you. It's the same logic people use to buy Powerball tickets. Sure, the odds are 1 in 292 million, but maybe you’re the one.
Two hours later, reality hit. Turns out, I wasn’t special after all. My clothes had been in the dryer for well over two hours and were as wet as a sponge.
So, we moved to Plan B. I recruited my husband and daughter to help lug the damp clothes to an industrial laundromat nearby. An hour later, I had clean, dry clothes. The baggage handlers on our flight the next morning had no idea of the bullet they had dodged, had I checked in a suitcase full of damp, odorous clothes!
A few days later, we got home around midnight, exhausted from the transatlantic flight. Before I went to bed, I whispered a quiet thank you to my laundry machines. They’ve been good to me, and honestly, I’d taken them for granted.
And that’s the realization. We do take things for granted—laundry machines, yes, but also our health, mobility, food, and freedoms. As long as they’re functioning the way they’re supposed to, we barely notice them. It’s only when they break down or disappear that we suddenly gain perspective.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Lately, life seems determined to remind me of the small, quiet pleasures I overlook. So, I’m trying to be grateful for the little things that are working right now. Who knows when it will be gone? I don’t need to be stranded at a laundromat in a foreign country to find perspective. I can choose to see it right here, right now.
You live as if you were destined to live forever; no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by, you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last ― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
Very good Aruna, as usual!