Harvard tosses and turns its students through the rolling cycle of school and social life. However, sometimes the most turbulent cycle is a more literal one: Harvard’s laundry services. For students who do not use third party services, such as the large network offered by Harvard Student Agencies, Harvard’s laundry machines are the only option, with arrangements and student opinions varying across campus.
When it comes to Harvard’s laundry services, most students are content at best, and even these individuals are quick to note that they have heard others complain about the laundry facilities. Throughout the complaints, the overriding pattern is the vast variation of the services across dorms.
While all of the upperclassmen houses have their own laundry rooms, only select first-year dorms have them, meaning that many first-year laundry rooms serve students from multiple dorms. While Thayer’s room is accessible with a quick elevator trip, Stoughton’s laundry room is outside of the dorm and through the side entrance of a neighboring building.
Though these arrangements do not usually require long walks, there are other concerns about the rooms that are used by multiple dorms. “I think more machines [in Thayer] would be good, just because kids from Weld and Grays use it since they don’t have machines,” said Emily Hanson ’25 of Grays. Even in bigger dorms, there’s some discontent around the combined use. “Matthews is a big dorm, and we only have one laundry room with eight washers and dryers for a lot of students,” said Omar Zedan ’25 of Matthews.
Some upperclassmen said they have better arrangements in their houses compared to their first-year dorms. “I lived in Wigglesworth Hall and didn’t like those, but now in Lowell I’m fine with it. I lived in a separate building from the machines, so I’d have to go down three flights of stairs, go outside, and go down another flight to do laundry, and when I got to the machines, most of them were used or taken, and many of the machines were older, broken, or not working,” said Carolyn Ge ’22 of Lowell.
However, even among the Houses there are differences. While Houses like Eliot and Winthrop have wide rooms with multiple tables stretched across, others like Quincy’s New Quincy and Leverett’s McKinlock are left with tight spaces and few machines in each room. Students sometimes have to go at odd hours to find available machines.
The age of the machines also varies, with the machines in the Yard generally being older than the ones in the Houses. “I wish the machines were a bit more updated, since they’re pretty old, even though they replaced some of these. I know a lot of people who can’t use pods in the machines because they don’t work with them,” said M.C. Hanifee ’25 of Stoughton. The most commonly cited issues were payment malfunctions and ineffective drying. However, one constant is the instruction posters in the laundry rooms feature Blackberry-style mobile phones and copyright dates from 2010.
Some students noted mild discontent with the payment system. “It costs $1.50, which isn’t the worst. It’d be much better if they didn’t charge for laundry, but I’m not complaining, honestly,” said Issac Tang ’25 of Weld. Other students echo this tone of begrudging acceptance. “When it comes to pricing, it’d be preferable to be free, but it’s not the end of the world for it to be $1.50. Overall, I don’t think it’s too bad, but it could probably be better,” said Sebastian Ramirez ’25 of Hollworthy.
Others defend the payment barrier as a way of preventing laundry from becoming even more of a free-for-all, but they also noted that there were probably better ways of handling the issue. “If there was a thing to remedy about it, it would be to have a weekly amount of money that the university gives you to spend on laundry. That way, you don’t have overflow, but at the same time you wouldn’t have to pay unless you need to do more than what you’re given,” said Josiah Meadows ’23 of Winthrop.
Laundry etiquette varies somewhat by House. However, two practices remain universal: students leaving completed laundry loads sitting in the machines for extended periods of time, and other students removing said loads to start loads of their own. Some Houses provide bags for forgotten laundry, but peoples’ clothes usually end up stacked on top of the machines, with socks occasionally falling to the floor.
Students generally accept the unspoken rule of removing their peers’ clothes. “It would be great if people could move in and out of laundry quickly, but sometimes I understand that people are busy around here. If you toss their clothes in a bag and put it somewhere else neatly, that’s fine with me,” said Andrew Shen ’23 of Quincy.
However, other students are less than thrilled, especially when it seems like there is a rush to remove clothes as soon as they are done. “I’ve had my clothes taken out as soon as the dryer stops. I’ve walked in and seen people taking my own clothes out. I don’t know if they’re taking them out early or not, but it is frustrating,” said Ben Weatherwax ’24 of Eliot.
Though etiquette generally remains at a tacit compromise, drama occasionally spills over into wider discussion. Debates have broken out in House group chats and email lists over how long laundry should rest in a machine before it is fair game to remove. In a notable case, a Leverett senior sent a profanity-laced email to the House list, claiming that someone had taken out his clothes halfway through a dryer cycle and more generally cursing out the class of ’24. This spawned a long back-and-forth of questions, memes, and insults until another student claimed they had removed the laundry because the dryer had never started in the first place.
While these concerns are shared among students, they do not amount to much beyond that. The UC had offered applications for $20 laundry subsidies, but it is unknown what any such effort would look like under the new HUA. With a mix of contentment and frustration, Harvard’s laundry looks like it will continue on the same cycle, rinse and repeat.
Ryan Golemme ’23 (ryangolemme@college.harvard.edu), who realized in reporting this story that the other Houses have much cooler basement areas than Leverett does, writes news for the Independent.