Allergies to Laundry Detergent

I have laundry facilities in the basement of my high rise apt building: 6 washers, 2 of which never work or only run cold, and 8 dryers, 2 of which are always broken, all for almost 300 units in my building. Not great odds.

After years of battling with housekeepers and other tenants for the working machines, just to find my clothing littered with animal hair or pock-marked with someone’s leftover bleach, I said to hell with it, I’m sending it out. Oh and they raised the prices to $2.00 per, for machines that calling them unreliable would be a compliment.

So, I’ve been sending my laundry out.

Yes, this Allergic Girl was concerned: what kind of laundry detergent would they use? Would I be allergic? But I took a chance and surprisingly the first few years were trouble free. My cleaners used a non-scented detergent and all was well.

Until a few months back.

I don’t know what happened, what executive decision was made to go from no smell to extra smelly/fragrant but my clean “wash and fold” arrived completely contaminated. I mean, so fragrant my clothes were unwearable.

I called Alex, the manager of the small dry cleaners who send it out, he said he would send it back to be washed in water and go through the cycle with “nothing”. Take three guesses what came back? Yup, they rewashed it in the same smelly detergent claiming they hadn’t changed a thing, that this was the process they had been using for years.

I really dislike it when people lie to cover their mistakes. Why? Why not just say we changed detergents, or vendors? What’s the big deal.

When I called Alex to tell him not only had they not run through the laundry with just water, but they washed it in the same detergent and made it twice as bad, he apologized profusely.

I said, “I have allergies that’s why I asked them to re-do this. I cannot wear clothing smelling like this not to mention what it might do to my skin.”

Alex said, as if it was simplest thing in the world, “You can give us your own laundry detergent. We have a lot of customers with allergies who give us their detergent to use.”

How cool that others had not only paved the way but created an easy solution! Yay! I had a large Costco-sized Tide from the days when I was still trudging down to the basement, I wrote my name and apartment number on there and easy peasy, all done.

I love it when something is simple in our collective allergic world.