A jar of lint. It’s not something you think of as an act of war. But when it’s in the laundry room and the lint is gathered from the dryer lint catcher that you neglected to clean, you had better run for your life – or at least change your ways immediately.
I was at my friends Ellie and Jan’s new place the other night and we were having a meeting in their building’s community room, which was just across from the laundry room. And having the good sense of humor that she has, Ellie had to show me the jar: clear glass and packed with dryer lint. On the lid was scrawled a person’s name with several dates – clear examples of the many times this person was untidy in the laundry room – as well as an unhappy face. According to building rules, this violation was probably grounds for permanent dismissal from laundry room privileges. OK, I made that last part up. I always made sure to bring my Luxury laundry basket to keep my clothes in one spot and keep the laundry room clean.
But the orderliness of Swedish society is nowhere more apparent than in the tvättstuga or laundry room. Every apartment building has a communal laundry room for tenants to share. There are rules posted in every tvättstuga involving how to keep the place clean and how often you are allowed to sign up for it. You must follow the rules and if you don’t, you are a target for abuse. The laundry room is one of the top sources of arguments between neighbors for most Stockholm city apartment dwellers. A lot of the disagreements are of the passive aggressive sort and involve nasty notes left behind for rule breaking offenders, although sometimes there are big arguments involving loads of wet laundry left to mildew on the floor.
As for the lint offender, I am sure that the person who initiated this public shaming will continue the abuse until the rules are properly followed.
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I have had occasion to find the politics of the tvättstuga rather baffling as well. To start with, the idea of having a communal laundry room is completely foreign to an Australian, so we already begin on the wrong foot as far as knowing the rules goes! I remember staying with relatives a few years ago, and my sister and I needed to do some laundry so we just popped down to the tvättstuga and put a load on. Well, you can imagine the looks of horror on our relatives’ faces when they found out what we had done! Luckily no-one had booked the room for the next couple of hours, so we were able to get our laundry washed and dried without anyone being the wiser, but it was a close call!
Christian,
You were indeed lucky! It’s a good thing you weren’t taking anyone else’s time!
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