I have a question about laundry room etiquette in apartments. I started doing my laundry an hour ago and at that time someone had their clothes in the only good dryer we have. After I started my second load of wash I decided to remove the clothes from that dryer after the owner of those clothes failed to come get them and/or put more quarters in the machine.
A few minutes ago I went back into the laundry room to check the machine and found some guy sitting on one of the washers watching the dryer I had been using. He had removed my clothes, which I assume had not completely went through their cycle and most likely put his clothes back in the machine.

I was wondering how long you give a person to remove their clothes or put more money in the machine before you take a machine. My apartment is right next to the laundry room, so it is easy for me to do laundry, but alot of people in our building allow their clothes to sit in a machine for several hours. We only have three washers and three dryers, and a few of them often break down or have glitches, so it kind of sucks when somebody forgets about their clothes

hit that guy with a brick and set him on fire.

you give them no time.
i don't have this problem because the dryers run for 60 minutes and that always does the trick but around these parts everybody just moves finished laundry around. ya snooze ya looze. you could be waiting around all day.

i'm pretty good about it though. i always set the timer to let me know when the cycles are done.
i'm such a good neighbor.

I finally have my own washer and dryer. I am almost embarrassed how excited I was to buy it but I hated the old common shared laundry facilities. The situation you've described sucks all around as does the fact that the floors were so dirty that if you dropped something in the transfer from washer and dryer it often had to go right back in the dirty pile.

Before I had my own though, I'd usually try to avoid that scene altogether and let my dirty laundry build up for weeks and then go do 5-7 loads at once at a nearby laundromat. I'd still recommend that as the lesser of two evils. As far as etiquette goes, I would try to give someone 30-40 minutes figuring I'd cut someone a break if they don't get their crap right away but I wouldn't want to risk getting lapped by anyone else just starting a wash who wasn't as nice as me.

I'm with ayah on this one. I know the washer takes 35 minutes and the dryer takes 45, so I set timers for those times. If someone isn't there to take his or her stuff out, too bad.

As a resident of college dorms for six years, I quickly learned to watch my clothes and the machines I was using, that is why crap like this bothers me enough to post about it. I'd go to a laundromat, but since this is my only day off this week and am in the process or looking for a house or duplex to rent and a better paying job to easily afford my new place, I really don't want to spend a couple hours at a laundromat when I live right next to the laundry room.

yeah but if you pull my laundry out because I'm 5 minutes late coming back and I decide to retaliate by wiping my ass with one of your shirts, that's too bad too.

BTW, I am not as pissed now the machine is available again and the dude who threw my clothes out left me .75 for my time.

it's probably pretty awkward to get busted taking someone's shit out of their dryer.

I wouldn't recommend staying at the laundromat. Really if you don't consider it important to watch over your laundry in your building's laundry room why would you consider it that important to be keeping that close an eye on it at a laundromat.

I've always considered my laundry safer from theft at the laundromat than it would be in an apartment building's facilities. At least there's more people around and the laundromat usually has some full time employees there during the day watching over things too.

It's more awkward when you are sifting through their stuff looking for good shirts.

I can hear everyone who goes in and out of that room while I sit here and check on my stuff quite frequently. I personally don't own a car at this point and rarely use my girlfriend's car on my days off. Occassionally we will go to a laundromat together so she can study and I read/listen to music.

i found ten dollars in an empty dryer the other day.
god wanted me to have it.

i try to do laundry at odd times so as to not deal with these problems, but it's tough when there are so few washers/dryers (4 each) for a complex of maybe 50 apartments. i wait a few minutes, but that's it.

the day after thanksgiving last year, some kids were shooting a movie in our laundry room and they locked the doors. i knocked on the door and they opened it, like, "what do you want?" "what the fuck do you think i want? i'm carrying laundry and this is the laundry room." ugh, i wanted to sabotage their little film.

a girl in my building claims that this happens to her all the time. people need patience of, like, five minutes. she must've been waiting for the cycle to finish because i was down there within two minutes of when it should end.

I shared a common laundry room a couple years ago at my first apartment. There was one washer and one dryer, for like 8 apartments. I didn't hesitate to take people's shit out as long as it was done, but I only really remember having to do it once or twice.

We just bought our own washer and dryer in January and like billy g said, I couldn't believe how excited we were to have our own. Our crazy neighbor accused us of using her dryer in a note, saying it was hot when she got home. And I'm pretty sure she accused us of this AFTER we bought our own. So she's pretty much dead to me now.

i used to do laundry late at night until one time I came back and found only my underwear left from a dryer full of clothes. Thereafter, I decided I better do it during hours when more people were around and theives would be less ballsy.

Wipe your ass with one of my shirts? Yikes. I think an "I'm sorry" would be more appropriate. We only have 1 washer and 1 dryer for 40+ people at my complex, so I need to do laundry when I have the chance.

TP is gettin' expensive, yo....

I try and give 'em 1/2 hour post-my clothes being done in the washer - I was a victim of clothesremoveditis way too many times during college...

This happened in the dorms alot... I always gave people 5-10 minutes to get their stuff, especially if it was fully dry. If it's still damp, that's a strange situation. In the dorm I lived in, there was a lounge right there, and I would just stay there. If a dryer was done and someone needed it, it was common for people to announce it to those in the lounge in case they had lost track of time. But once I went in when my time was up, and someone had taken my stuff out and put theirs in, but mine was still wet. But warm, so it hadn't been more than a minute or two.
To get back at him, I just opened the door to the dryer and then reclosed it. The dryers we had didn't start again automatically, but the timer kept going. So when he came back 40 minutes later his stuff was still sopping wet... passive-aggressive, yes I know, but still very satifying.

There are people in my apartment and a few people in the dorms who will either forget what dryer they are using or check to see if the clothes in a machine are dry so they can steal it, and they forget to push the button again, so I get/got screwed out of a cycle. I can see where you'd do it to get back at someone, but it really pisses me off when I got the machine fair and square.

How's this for douchy? The equipment in the laundry room at my last apartment was evidently contracted to some outside company, so if one of the machines broke, the apartment manager would give you their phone number and tell you to call them.

I got some jeans and a t-shirt stolen from me out of a dryer when I was in the Air Force. My cousin gave me the t-shirt and it was one of those Calvin ripoffs but it had her college name on it. I saw a guy wearing it around the dorm a few days later and said it was a nice shirt and asked just where is Bridgewater State? Of course he didn't know and I took great pleasure in hearing he got discharged from the Air Force a few months later.

I don't really have this problem anymore since I'm in a house and we have our own washer & dryer. It annoys me when one of my roommates wants to cut into my laundry time and 'just throw a small bundle in'. Wait your fuckin' turn.

Yeah, we had most of the machines in my complex broken shortly after Christmas. We had to wash our clothes and then dry them in our apartment on a drying rack. We got so fed up that several tenants confronted the maintenance men and told them to fix it immediately or risk losing rent and facing the Lincoln Housing Authority

Oh yeah, this was never a mistake. When I did this I always did it on purpose. I knew you had to push the button to start it again. But yeah, it sucks when someone just forgets.