You don't mess with laundry day...

For most of my life, using laundry as an excuse to get out of a social engagement was a way to express not just that you didn't want to do whatever your friend had asked (attend a birthday party for a cat, or whatever), but also just how much you didn't want to do said thing. In Switzerland, telling your friends that it is your laundry day is met with understanding, reverence, and sympathy. Laundry day is a justifiable excuse not only for cat birthdays, but concerts, parties, and drinks with friends from out of town. You don't mess with laundry day. 

When we first moved here and were living in a French couple's living room, we thought that their limited options of doing laundry either on Friday afternoon or Sunday morning was extremely restrictive. Little did we know that our time there was living it laundry large. They didn't have to ask for a key. They didn't even have to pay. And... they had the option of two days per week. What luxury. 

 As we started the great apartment search, we learned that, along with the move-in date and cost of utilities, laundry access should be one of your first questions. For many buildings each apartment had a particular day per week that was "their" laundry day. If you missed one Tuesday, you had to wait for the next one. Pity was saved for those assigned to Fridays. Other buildings had even less convenient cycles - once every ten days, once every two weeks, or in a few cases one time per month. 

Our current apartment building has a more flexible model. Rather than being assigned a specific day, you just have to ask for the key at least two days in advance and hope that someone else in the building hasn't asked for it. But, once you have the key you have to be careful to abide by the other regulations: you may not start before8am or finish after 7pm, you have to return the key before 8am the next day, and no laundry may be done on Sundays. 

In case you are wondering how strictly these rules are enforced, after two instances of Kris and I "sneakily" asking for the key for Saturday but doing the laundry on Sunday a sign appeared on the laundry room door specifically prohibiting that course of action. 

Alas. 

We actually whimsically talk about things we will do once back in the states: laundry after seven, recycle glass on Sundays, go grocery shopping after six... sigh. What dreams. What dreams.