Dominica Laundry---The story of the homeless clothes

Do you remember the scene from Forest Gump, where Tom Hanks says the famous quote of "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get."

This quote pretty much sums up the laundry experience here in Dominica. There are no laundromats and the significant majority of apartments do not have laundry machines on site. Which means we have to give our laundry to laundry service.  My maid does my laundry for me which  makes everything a lot easier (no arranging pickup times).  Instead I can just leave the laundry bag in my front room on the cleaning days. I am sure most of you having green-tinged thoughts of jealousy right now but hang on....

Having your laundry done by someone else is amazing for the sole reason that it gives you time to do other things like study and sleep (especially since a lot of the laundry here is done by hand).

However, you get random articles of clothing back in your laundry (like a random pair of boxers, or someone's Banana Republic tshirt).  This morning while I was on my way out of my apartment, my maid stopped me while holding a bag of "homeless" articles of clothing.  She basically wanted to know if any of the tshirts, underwear, socks, etc were mine.  Thankfully I haven't lost any clothes through this delightful laundry process  and have only acquired a few bleach stains on my clothes (They seriously like bleach here!)

Also another hazard of someone doing your laundry for you is that they can take a very important article of clothes at a very bad time...aka my green Anatomy scrubs.  On Monday morning I was pulling stuff together for the day and I was trying to find my designated green scrubs for anatomy. I looked everywhere for them--in my closest, under my bed, in the couch, etc. I knew that I had laid them out on the chair the night before.  My maid must have thought they needed cleaning so she took them from under my dissection kit and placed them in the laundry. NOT GOOD!! Thank goodness I had an extra pair or I would have been in loads of trouble (I would not have been able to take my anatomy practical...major eek!)

So in summary, having your laundry done is nice and time-saving but it also comes with the hazards of bleach stains, homeless clothes and MIA articles of clothes.