Adine Mitrani, a cherub from Bay Harbor Island, Fla., came to the NHSI journalism program prepared with enough underwear for five weeks, she said.
“My mom knew I wasn’t going to do laundry,” Mitrani said. “So she sent me with enough stuff for most of the time I’d be here.”
Still, Mitrani needed to wash her clothes once during her five week stay in Evanston. Mitrani solicited the help of three other cherubs since she had never done laundry. She described her Sunday afternoon in the laundry room as “a horrible experience.”
Despite the reluctance of some like Mitrani, laundry was a practicality for the 2007 journalism cherubs.
Three washing machines and three dryers are located in the basement of Jones Residential College. Cherubs dragged their hefty laundry bags down the stairs or simply dropped them through the stairwell. Once in the basement laundry room, cherubs used quarters to pay $1 per washing machine or dryer load.
“It’s ridiculous that you have to pay $1 for both the washing machine and the dryer,” said Gabe Debenedetti, a cherub from Princeton, N.J., “But those machines have a monopoly on it.”
Debenedetti said he did his laundry every weekend of the cherub program. He had experience washing his clothes at other summer programs, but said that his stay at Northwestern made him “quite a pro.”
Debenedetti’s laundry skills did not prevent him from dealing with the challenges posed by temperamental dryers.
“One week I tried to fit all of my clothes and sheets and towels in the same load,” he said. “It did not work so well. This was also the same day that the dryers decided not to work.”
Debenedetti spent the next three hours running his laundry through multiple cycles in the dryer, he said. Some of his clothes were still not dry and finished drying while hanging over Debenedetti’s bed.
“My roommate, Nico Savidge, is a pretty understanding person,” he said. “But he was understandably upset about the wet clothes hanging in our room.”
Mitrani dealt with other problems in the laundry room, she said.
“The worst part of my laundry experience wasn’t the laundry itself,” she said.
Mitrani was using a new cell phone that she purchased in Evanston because she dropped her old one down three flights of stairs during the first week of cherubs. She set her phone on a wet counter as she put her first load in the washing machine. When Mitrani picked up her phone, it slipped out of her hand. The phone cracked and she needed to return to the Verizon store to buy another one, Mitrani said.
Even with her laundry difficulties, Mitrani said she feels more capable of washing her own clothes.
“I might only need one person to help me next time,” she said.
Some offered laundry assistance without being asked. Austin Shapiro, of Dexter, Mich. folded clothing that had been left unattended whenever he did his own laundry.
“It’s rude to leave people’s clean clothes just lying around,” he said.
Cherubs often returned to the laundry room to find their clothing removed from the dryer, folded, and ready to be put away. A successfully completed load of laundry meant a victory for cherubs like Mitrani and Debenedetti.
“Nothing turned pink while I was here,” Debenedetti said.
Press play to watch a video on how to do laundry. Producer Ally Bain.
Cherubs share laundry necessities.
The dryers in the laundry room at Jones.
The washing machines in the laundry room at Jones.
Jayson Weingarten explores the many uses of laundry bags.
