Calling out the ‘washing ghosts’, the people who never pick up their clothes on time

Recently, we called out the washing machine wardens of student halls; the people who spend their days policing the University washing machines. This however, is a rallying call to their defence. Those who are a bulwark of the group chat, of order in the laundry room and who have been pushed to act on their own initiative.

Mark Corrigan once said, 'There are systems for a reason in this world' and in attempting to echo his timeless words, I implore you washing ghosts out there to accept that fact. It's not that you are bad people, but you are either lazy or mistaken, neither of which are positive character traits.

Time is money

Washing clothes is a simple process of which the labour has been thankfully transferred to machine from human. Whilst I concede circuit laundry fails to display the creeping AI intelligence that we fear from modern technology, it does facilitate a simple service.

You insert £2 into the machine, add a little washing powder, and return thirty minutes later to make the choice of air or tumble drying. With a simple bit of magic, i.e the timer device on your phone (and don't tell me your phone doesn't have one) you may be alerted the instant your washing cycle has ended.

A responsible adult

Also, you live in the same building as your washing machines which should make a prompt collection even easier. Unless you have the foresight of a lemming, I do not understand how within such a short amount of time, you could have positioned yourself to be unable to collect your washing.

A Washing Ghost in action

Should you decide to abandon your washing, be it to pop to a lecture, or over to the Rugby lads room who dirtied your Calvin's in the first place, it is not the problem of the innocent and more diligent washer and they shouldn't have to wait around to put their wash on. They are well within their right to remove your clothes from the machine, pop them into a bag on the floor, into a drier, or if needs be, and with a heavy but dutiful heart, onto the floor.

I don't want to hear the faux outrage that your vintage sweat, freshly washed is now a dusty mess. You should learn from your mistakes and realise that you can't just leave your washing in the drier like you would at home, where your mother will just sort it out. I am not your mother, and your clothes are as unimportant to me as if I was to find them in the last washer in any laundrette, or abandoned somewhere else. I treat strangers clothes in a similar manner, with the same disregard the person who owns them also treated them.

This is my look of schadenfreude as I throw your washing out

So next time you do your washing, be like everyone else and pick up your clothes on time. Systems exist for a reason, and if you do pick up your clothes on time, you won't cause a queue, your oh so special vetements won't end up defiled by the disgusting creatures with whom you share an accommodation block, and you can save your faux outrage in the group chat when you discover someone else had the audacity to use the washing machine that they have equal access to.

'Please Officer, stop, someone may have left their suitcase abandoned in this airport, however it would be a truly detestable invasion of privacy to disrupt their choice of location for their clothes' – Washing ghost, probably.