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So your heap of clothes has grown so large that you have to clear a path just to answer the phone. You can actually see stink lines coming out of it like in the cartoons, and when you turned on the lights this morning, you saw a raccoon scamper away. You might want to think about doing your laundry.
Doing laundry isn't too hard, it's finding a time when nobody else is doing their laundry that's the trick. When you divide up six washing machines between three hundred students, there's bound to be some problems. Early in the morning is a good time to grab a machine, and common sense would dictate that late at night would be a good time too... but we already know how well common sense works around here. Marist Money is taken down every night at like 2am for updates and stuff like that, so if you throw your laundry into the washer at 1:50, you'll have to find alternative ways to dry your socks.
So you've made it to the laundry room and found an available washer (or two). I know a lot of people don't need these directions, but I sure did, so here goes... You'll want to seperate your clothes into whites and non-whites. They have buttons there for a reason. Throw a capful or two into each bin, and then we're ready to start these machines.
The little grey box on the wall is where you pay for the rides in the machines. Swipe your card through it, and it will ask you for the machine number. Enter in your numbers, and hit enter after each one. When you're done, make sure you hit "cancel" a couple of times. This is important because if you don't, somebody can come up after you and use your Marist Money to pay for their laundry. And since we're mean and selfish people, we don't want that to happen.
Anyway, while your clothes are washing, feel free to walk around, socialize, fly a kite, whatever. Just make sure you come back when the twenty-five minutes are up, because if you don't, somebody will take them out for you and throw them all over the floor. You probably won't have to worry about somebody swiping your clothes while they're getting washed, but while your jeans are lying on the floor, certain people might feel more inclined to walk away with them.
So once you take your clothes and throw them in the dryer, make sure you clean off the lint screen (located on the bottom left side of the hole where clothes go... and yes, that's the scientific name) Unless you're drying ONE sock, you will need to put on more than the standard 15 minutes for your dryer load. The fifteen minute default setting was set when only midgets went to Marist, who brought only very tiny clothes. (I bet they didn't tell you about that in orientation, eh?) If you're doing a load that fills the bin more than halfway, 45 minutes should do. Also, if you're drying towels, you'll want to throw then into a seperate dryer, just because they tend to take a little bit longer.
Same rules apply for the dryer. If your time runs out and you're not there, you risk having the creepy guy down the hallway going through your underwear. It doesn't take a lot of brains to do laundry, but it's also very easy to spend 3 hours doing laundry if you screw up. Just remember to take the crayons out of your pockets before hitting the start button.