Laundry

Unlike in other parts of the world, there are no laundry mats and apartments do not have a laundry room in Dominica. No, I don't walk around smelling like the anatomy lab, nor do I wash my clothes in the rivers (like some of the locals). I use a laundry service. Now this sounds like a great luxury; however, it is not. There are several different services throughout the area. Generally they pick up your laundry about 7:00am and are suppose to drop it off between 6:00-7:00pm. Last year, Farley and I waited until our friends had done laundry and asked about the different companies before we had our laundry done. Waiting to do our laundry was one of the smartest things we've done. There have been people who didn't get laundry returned for a week, people who have had their laundry smell worse when it returned than before being washed and missing things. The laundry service that we use is overall pretty good. I've lost one wash cloth, our laundry was a day late once (when there was a big rainstorm and the water was brown) and a couple times we've had to call because we either were missing something or had something extra (but other than the wash cloth, we have gotten everything back). Our laundry is NEVER returned between 6:00-7:00pm, but excluding the one extremely rainy day, our laundry is always returned by 9:00pm. Another good thing about our laundry service is that it always smells like it has been washed; however, things often change colors. Light blue is often turned to an off blue white, black turns into dingy grey, other colors are dimmed, but whites are bright! The laundry is always hot, hot, hot! I never wash my clothes in hot water and I air dry a lot of my things (or I put them on low heat in the dryer). These hot clothes result in not only changing colors, but size and shape changes too. So, yes, it is nice not to do laundry (and the laundry lady folds things beautifully); but, I'd rather do my own laundry any day.