The rich don't do laundry. Everybody else either learns or stinks.

I saw a show about a mom that not only does her 20 something year old sonS laundry, she manages their class schedules, cleans their apartments, does their grocery shopping, etc. AND THEY LET HER DO ALL OF THIS. All I have to say is people like this, who refuse to teach their children life skills, are simply raising TOTAL NIGHTMARES for anyone who has to deal with (never mind date) these man children. We don't need more people in this world expecting OTHER PEOPLE to do everything for them. Get a grip and learn how to be an adult and manage your own goddamn life!!! This stuff makes me insane.

News Flash: College students are useless, lazy, and do not live in the real world.

This is news to absolutely no one who has met a college student trying to take themselves seriously.

$350?

That's barely more than what they charge for on campus parking.

Sounds like a bargain to me, Rip Van Winkle.

The helicopter-parents aside, our society is becoming MORE disposable, not less.

People throw away stuff that's almost brand new... in order to get the LATEST brand new whatever.

One more thing, my mother taught me how to do my own laundry when I was TWELVE YEARS OLD. How do yo uget into college and not know how to do laundry? Perhaps we need a life skills testing requirement in the college application/entry process.

Epic failure of parenting is what this is.

The laundromat near LSU only charges $125 a semester for laundry service. That's nuts, etiher way.

Laundry is not that hard. Really. I feel like you can teach someone the basics in like 5 min.

Say what you will about having single parent households, but this ensured I learned to do the laundry by the time I was 10 years old. Not to mention change my bedding, run a dishwasher, vacuum/mop floors, etc. and as I've said before, I'm only like a dozen years older than most of these kids. What the hell happened?

@8

That's actually a great price for 3 months of laundry service. Inexcusable as the state of all this might be, I would totally pay someone that much money to do my laundry for me.

Oh, man, I was so clueless when I got to college. I made some hilarious mistakes -- I had never heard of Ajax and used it to wash my dishes once, for example. Fortunately I managed to puzzle out the other mysteries of being a human before anything worse happened.

I'd imagine that if you were wealthy enough to get to college never having learned to do laundry, you might be able to afford that.

@11: At least you got to make those mistakes on your own.

I went to the Army before I went to college. I was very good at doing everything for myself... except cook. :)

Although I should say that my mom made me do laundry once I could reach the buttons. She even had a nice little flowchart above the washer to decide which setting and cleaner to use.

She also made me make dinner because she worked and had 4 children. I once baked a frozen meat loaf in the box... it didn't say to take it out of the box. I was 12, give me a break!

I used ammonia to clean my toilet for a long time and stored my clothes in the dish cupboard. I had no dresser and no dishes. I also wasn't sure where to buy new underwear when the old ones wore out, since I bought all my other clothes at the thrift store, but I sure didn't want to buy skivvies from there....

I don't see why people get so upset by this, if someone is well off enough to get stuff done for them, good for them and good for the person who started the service that is a good way to make money. Sure some kids might be more spoiled but why should that bother you.

Eh, most of them are going to end up moving back in with mom & dad after graduation anyway, and there's already at least one person there who knows how to do laundry.

@5 buh buh if people don't buy stuff then the economy will be destroyed.

@16

Because people should possess basic life skills. It's kind of one of qualities that makes a decent person. Or you could choose to be like a former roommate of mine who, at the age of 40, spilled Kool Aid on the kitchen floor and just stared at it before asking my girlfriend what he should do.

hell .. not only did i learn how to do my laundry, i had to know how to do my mom's laundry.. as the eldest of 6 ( 2 of 'em weren't hers. they were my daddy's younger siblings who live with us when their parents died, even though my dad was long gone ) and i better do em 'RIGHT' . which means separating the delicates ( slips, bras and girdles.. catalina remembers girdles, don't you cat ? ) and colors. knwoing when to wash cold or not to wash at all, and what to take to the dry cleaners - cause my single parent worked. ( and din't take no danged guv'mint 'handouts' neither. ) of course if she had a 'real marriage' she wouldn't have had to do SQUAT !

@20.. oh.. and i had to take the laundy to a 'laundromat' . it was called the ' norge village' and it was about 8 city blocks away. yes laundry for a family of 7 , wash dry sort and fold..yes.. and don't get me started about cooking..goddamn kids...
..*muttering*

Everyone should have these basic life skills, yes, but not everyone need use them if they have the means. I struggled through college, acting frugal...to the point it was detrimental to my studies. I was stepping over the quarters to pick up the dimes. Once I finally took out a loan so I wouldn't have to work so damn hard and live like a pauper, my grades shot up. I was always amazed at how much my roommate's parents did for him, but their investment payed off in his 3.9 gpa.

This nonsense about doing everything yourself is ridiculous. If you're comfortably middle class or wealthier, why waste your precious time with laundry and cleaning? There are so many poor people in need of work right now. Perhaps if it wasn't for this rugged individualism nonsense they could have work as domestics. As soon as it's in the budget, the bf and I are getting a housekeeper for a few hours a week.

@3 Grow up.

Disposable sheets?!? Whiskey Tango FUCK? Whoever thought that up was clearly a big devotee of P.T. Barum's adage about not going broke.

Our dorm had three common rooms (other than the restrooms): The lounge, the study lounge and the "laundry lounge" (unofficial name). The last was closest, so we mostly hung out there. Didn't do laundry often, but once in a while...

@19 People with the means to make other people do their chores have the right to employ other people to do those chores for them. Your former roommate is not one of those people.

If a family can afford to pay for laundry done by somebody else, and has the means to have a maid and laundry service, and chef, and butler...by all means, pay the $350/sem for laundry. Sure, $1050/yr seems extravagant to some of us, but that's not terribly much for the ability to not do laundry and party harder.

But, if this is an exception and a not-quite-hardship where the college student will eventually have to learn how to get by on their own...this is dumb. I still remember the one time my mother came and visited me freshman year while I was doing laundry, and she went into the laundry room appalled by how many clothes I had stuffed into the 2 driers, and proceeded to redry those clothes by spreading them out into 5 driers and then proceeded to mock and lambast me for that. My argument was that I didn't want to spend all day doing laundry. Ah, college...

My point is, if you have the means to pay somebody else to do it, then I have no problem with that. It's not like they're making somebody else do it for free.

@22,

There's also the ever-increasing pressure put on these students to get perfect grades and choose "useful" majors so they can get jobs when they graduate.

I wish I'd had the foresight to hire people to do my chores for me. It would have reduced roommate tension and given me more time to study.

@16 Because these people go through life expecting everyone else to do shit for them.

I started doing laundry when I was six, after a 12-hour-day in the coal mines. Fucking kids these days.

@19 - Did the girlfriend tell him to sit on the spill and then scoot around the floor on his butt until it was all wiped up? If she kept a straight face and said, "I do it that way all the time. Everyone I know does it that way. You mean you never heard of it?", I bet he totally would have done it.

My parents were together until I was 10 years old, from 10 on I was raised in a single father household. When I got to college I was surprised at how little other kids were tasked with mundane household stuff.

When I was in college I don't think I ever washed my sheets at all. In the Madhouse (U-Dist punk house) I don't even think I HAD sheets.

No one here is arguing against hiring people to do your chores for you. That's a ridiculous straw man that reeks of the "punish success" trope people drag out. I am saying that without learning these skills, a lot of people are lost and yes, Misanthrope, that includes my former roommate. He came from a well off family who did everything for him, or had the help do it, or his ex-wife. They all cut him off and now he's middle-aged man baby with no life skills working a retail job. Fuck that.

@29

Hahaha! I wish!

@32 Actually, it's not quite a straw man. My parents couldn't have afforded it. And, wouldn't have either. Thus, I learned.

As I said, if this is a genuine problem that Mrs. Leone's son (in the article) will be running into because he won't have money to use to pay for people to do his laundry, then its a serious problem. If he won't have that issue, he won't ever need to know that skill.

I BEGGED my mother to teach me how to do laundry when I was a kid - but she wouldn't let me actually do it until I went to college. I still can't fold clothes! It's really pathetic and my Navy trained husband won't let me fold any clothes.

Here's the truth: If you can't do laundry properly, you'll be the one stuck cleaning the bathroom.

My ex, at the age of 34, told me that no way could it be possible that the sheets wore HOLES through them inside of one year because he never washed them. He had one set of sheets and railed against the idea of washing or changing them every few weeks as unnecessary housework. He was convinced that the sheets got holes in them because of shoddy workmanship.