Nearly as bad as the stench from the sports gear bags: the overly enthusiastic use of Axe in the dorm!
My DD does her own laundry. Sheāll bring stuff home if sheās coming for an extended period of time.
As an aside, outer hallway in her dorm where the hockey bags are kept smell soooo bad. Iāll take chlorine any day!
@cameo43 That Axe enthusiasm stinks up the home too (for day students.) The worst is when my son uses too much Axe and it grosses out my daughter who then proceeds to try to drown out the smell with bath & body works spray. At that point, I canāt even walk upstairs! Blech!
I think you might actually save money with the laundry service if you get the dry cleaning option. In colder climates where the students wear sweaters, fleece, wool and cashmere knits it would cost a fortune to get those items cleaned at my local dry cleaner. I make sure all that stuff gets cleaned at school before coming home over breaks or for the summer.
On the negative side, socks and smaller items just come back in rolled up little balls. The laundry service is hard on delicate items and there are the occasional mystery items that show up. Does E&R have a big lost and found page somewhere?
I canāt imagine not using the laundry service (much as in principle, I would prefer DS to do his own laundry); just sorting the regular laundry vs. dry clean items and getting them into a bag and dropped off every week is likely to be a challenge for DS. And I hope to God that wherever he goes, the school provides and launders practice uniforms. I canāt even drive him home from soccer practice without the windows open. We visited one school during hockey tryouts, and the bags had to be kept outdoors ā that is a good policy.
Hello everybody. Long time, no talk. I heard laundry was up for discussion. Hereās the deal (again): I donāt care if the kid smells like s/he crawled out of the sewer, or if you can feel the heat come off that compost pile of clothes stuck in the corner, putrefaction eventually has its consequences: no one wants to visit their room, the prefects get scared of disease and make them clean, they look like idiots walking around with different socks on, they smell like a corpse in class etc. In a year or two, maybe sooner, they start taking care of themselves. They learn how to use the washing machine and dryer. They realize that all that clean laundry that appeared in their rooms at home growing up, it wasnāt the laundry fairy. It was hard working, under appreciated Mom. Before you know it, they start taking responsibility for their basic hygiene. God knows, theyāve all hit the jackpot getting into one of these schools. The least they can do is wash and fold.
My son uses the laundry service as does most of his dorm. I think it depends on the kid but athletes go through substantially more clothes and under garments/socks. I canāt imagine how he would find the time to do it with his schedule. Personally if you calculate the cost per load and multiple it times weekly loads we also thought there wasnāt much of a savings either.
Cate doesnāt use a laundry service - the kids are expected to do their laundry themselves. I thought this was a great, idea for my organized & responsible daughter. But now that my son is applying, Iām wondering if it will break him 
Both my kids seem to handle laundry admirably at school. If only they could be induced to do the same at homeā¦
In my DDās case it wouldnāt have worked out. I just recently added $20 to her account which started with $20. So not even $40 yet. The plan at her school was $800 if I recall.
Assuming very generously that there are 30 weeks of school, that would be $26-27 per week for the laundry plan. Yes, you can do your laundry much cheaper on your own.
I usually include a roll or two of quarters in the care packages, just to be sure thereās no obstacle to getting the laundry done at school. My kid started doing her own laundry when she was in the second or third gradeā¦ there has never been an illusion of a ālaundry fairyā in our house!
Welcome back, Parlabane! 
Yes, for anyone who is awaiting acceptances in the coming week, plenty of time to teach your child how to do their laundry between now and early September. Itās one of those life skills proving a young person is ready to head off to BS. If they are smart enough to get in, they are definitely capable of handling laundry.
Who?!
Yup, she disappeared way back when, with the tooth fairy and Santaā¦
I am suddenly so glad AtriaMum isnāt on CC. She already has piled extra chores upon me under the pretext of training and taking responsibilityā¦ :-/
Yes, and please do provide actual instruction as opposed to sending your kid off to school with a big bottle of detergent. You wouldnāt believe some of the interesting laundry adventures. At the very least, please ensure that they know how to tell the difference between the washer and the dryer. 8-|
Oh I donāt knowā¦ Tell them to not wash any expensive clothes the first timeā¦ besides thatā¦ well there always is Google 
I actually feel I improved some of my t-shirts through my laundry misadventures :))ā¦
Besides they wonāt make that same mistake againā¦
From observations from my years at BS, kids will not google ālaundry tips.ā Just getting them to the laundry room will be a chore.
I have seen too many kids who eventually went to Ivy caliber school wash their red tshirts with their white undies and girls who threw their bras in the dryer. (Apparently the bra in the dryer thing is a no-no - my family is all boys, so what do I know. 
)
@skieurope , you have described the reason I sent DS off with Shout color catcher sheets and instructions to put one in every load of laundry that wasnāt all white. Not light, but entirely white.
It would seem that all these kids who not only knew their colors, but how to spell them by 24 months, cannot differentiate what is light and what is dark. Which brings us full circle to the gray sheets several posts up. :))
4 kids. So far a combined 11 years of laundry service paid for - worth every penny. Free time at Exeter is rare and precious.
Best tip on boys and sheets I ever heard was to layer 3 sets of clean sheets over each other at the start of the term. Ask boy to remove one set every few weeks or months. Have them wash and replace when all are removed.
We refused to purchase laundry service as DS does his laundry at home. Grandparents offered to pay for service and we still said no. Then DS says everyone on my floor has laundry service except 5 of us. My reply āthen great youāll have company on the walk to the laundry.ā
When we flew up for a family weekend he asked if I could come from the hotel to pick him up at 7am to take him across the street to do his laundry!