Apartment Laundry Room Rules (OFFICIAL)

In the city, you've gotta figure out how to live and interact with people. Most people are nice, or at least well-intentioned, but that doesn't always work out too well in big groups, so not too long after cities first started popping up, the law was discovered. According to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, the Code of Hammurabi dates back to about 1754 BC, and includes 282 individual laws covering topics like contracts, liability, and household and family relationships.

Somewhat more recently, but long enough ago that people were still inventing good things instead of bad things like they do now, the first commercially available mechanical washers and dryers were devised. They were quickly installed in the basements and common areas of low- and mid-range apartment buildings all over America. Some people have washers and dryers right in their actual apartment units—so-called "in unit" washers and dryers—and that sounds cool, but I wouldn't mention it too loudly the way things are going lately.

And here are the rules for using that shared laundry room: 

• It's fine if you take someone's clothes out of the washer or dryer and place them on top of the washer or dryer or even their laundry basket if you're reasonably sure that the clothes belong in that particular basket

That's the one rule. This is good, and it works well for everyone. 

A carefully staged scene in my laundry room

It's okay to touch someone's clean clothes, even if they're wet. If they felt really strongly about it, they would have put a timer on their phone to come downstairs to immediately put their stuff in the dryer or bring it back up to their apartment.

Sometimes you will drop, like, a wet sock on the floor accidentally. That's bad, but that's just the world we live in. Try not to drop wet underwear on the floor.

Does this make you uncomfortable? I'm sorry. Desperate times in the shared laundry room call for desperate measures, and I always wait until too late at night to start doing laundry and I need to go to bed before the sun comes up.