Cute!

Huh? Having several sets of sheets so that there are always clean ones to be had would be the deciding factor. I have known guys who only have one set. I say eww.

This is NYC, where the eventual bundle of used sheets will fill a shopping cart that'll have to be hauled to a laundromat and back. No fun. Having one set of linens, changed weekly and washed in a mixed load with other stuff, starts to sound good.

Ah, the myths of NYC.

We recently had a, um, pest situation in our condo building that required white sheets for ease of monitoring (shudder), and it turned out that we only have one set of white sheets. We normally change sheets weekly, and it really wasn't that bad - strip them Sunday morning after getting out of bed, launder right away and put back on at any point before bedtime. Not much different from swapping out for another set, other than saving space in the hamper.

Definitely not a myth. A reality. Although laundry in the building isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when your building seems to have at least 6 people running illegal laundry services out of the basement and only 4 washers. Having laundry in your unit is the dream (and part of the reason we moved to the 'burbs, LOL).

We lived in an Upper West Side building with laundry room on each floor. Should have been great, but the dryers on our floor were so hot that we used other floors.

Very funny!

But I'm wondering, do we have anyone around who lives in NYC and could tell us all how it's really like? ;-)

I live in NYC. For the average middle class or working class family having a machine in your apartment is like hitting the lottery. There are a large amount of 3 to 6 story walk-ups that have neither building wide machines or allow machines in individual apartments. I always had a small portable and had to hide it every time the super or landlord needed access. It is standard in the average lease to forbid machines. Older housing stock most commonly does not allow machines. I now have an apartment with a laundry closet. New condo/rentals are now often including washers in a tiny closet, but not always. However, most new buildings are more expensive to buy or rent. (Not always, think fancy Park Avenue old stock, but $$$$). It is very common to see someone pushing a shopping cart (not supermarket carts) with laundry bags stacked high and two young children holding onto each side as a parent walks to or from the laundromat. See a NYC women pushing a typical cart. It becomes very expensive to do laundry at $3-$5 a load.

In most neighborhoods there are many laundromats. In the average low-rise outer-borough area you can find laundromats on every other block. Here is a picture of a laundromat I took in Harlem, across the street from City College of New York.

It is a very typical working class, gentrifying area with old housing stock of walk-ups and low-rise buildings. In addition very few apartments have linen closets.

I love linens but only have two sets of sheets. To save effort I usually just remove, wash, return to bed in a couple of hours. I keep all blankets, sheets, etc. on a shelf in my bedroom reach in closet. That is very typical of everyone I know.

Most think of NYC as Manhattan, NYC is made up of 5 boroughs. The outer boroughs, Brooklyn Queens, Bronx and Staten Island have a higher amount of private homes, they would always have machines but apartment dwellers are by far the largest population of residents of NYC.

I just want to say, NYC has it's difficulties, but it is a wonderful, exciting, interesting, diverse place to live. I love it.

bioandan, you've piqued my curiosity...how do the illegal basement laundry services work? Do they send out or wash and fold for you?

My kids' dormitory laundry rooms had washers and dryers that texted when the cycle ended. That's a feature I could use at home lol

Do most people use wash and fold laundromat services, or do stay and wait? Laundry Lounge sounds more fun than laundromat. I imagine there is wifi. What else do the best laundry facilities offer? Does a lounge serve food?

As @hmorton says, NYC is very large. It is impossible to generalize. It depends on which borough is under discussion, which neighborhood and what type of apartment or house.

I lived in Manhattan most of my life. I always lived in an apartment with laundry either in the building or in the apartment. In the 70s and early 80s, there were neighborhood laundries, traditionally Chinese, where the sheets and men's shirts were sent to weekly. Some sent all laundry there as it was where things got returned ironed and folded.

Not only can't I recall ever going to a laundromat in Manhattan, I can't even think of one in either of the last two neighborhoods where I lived over a 30 year span.

There are no generalizations. I submit there are a great many myths.

I live in the highest population and most densely populated zip code in Chicago, and there is not a laundromat within walking distance of our building. I can't even tell you where the nearest is. Other zip codes/neighborhoods have dozens, sometimes right next to each other. As @Rococo says, there can be no generalizations. It comes down to the demographics and income of the neighborhood, as well as the age of the buildings and what's feasible.

Yes, the vast differences from neighborhood to neighborhood (block to block, even!) in NYC make it impossible to generalize. In my old neighborhood in Queens, there were a handful of private homes (rowhouses), but the vast majority of housing stock was apartment buildings, mostly pre-war. This type of building almost never allows washing machines in unit, as water is provided by the building and included in the rent (or maintenance fee, if you are an owner). My upstairs neighbor flooded my bathroom with his illegal washer once and the penalties were fairly severe - he was required to pay for all of the damages and was fined a fairly large sum for the infraction. Newer buildings are starting to include in-unit laundry as a MAJOR selling point, and people really will pay A LOT more (rent or purchase price) for this feature.

Anyway, larger buildings typically have a laundry room in the basement, but the size and quality of such room varies drastically by building. My building had about 90 units (mostly 1-2 BRs with a handful of studios scattered in) and there were 4 washers and 4 dryers, at least one of which was always out of service. I think they cost $1.50-$1.75 to wash and $.25 per 6 minutes to dry, which meant that drying a load cost at least as much as washing one. The ladies who were running laundry out of the room seemed to be doing the washing/folding themselves, which is why our machines were always in use.

There are many laundromats in my old neighborhood, nearly all of which offered wash/fold services, and because of the situation in our building we typically just dropped our laundry off with one of these places and let them do the work. They charge by the pound and it's not cheap, but once you figure in the cost of detergent, the price of the machines in the building and the value of your time (not to mention the hassle), they are not a bad deal. I'm not sure how the ladies in my basement undercut these places, although I imagine their customer base was drawn heavily from inside our building, which adds a huge convenience factor (and presumably a premium price), especially if they were doing pickup and delivery. However, when you're paying by the pound, you definitely find yourself looking at all those heavy towels and piles of bed linen and thinking "eh, I can let this go another week." LOL.

Interesting. So do you think traditional Laundromats will eventually go the way of Drive-in Movies and landlines?

...makes me realize how "spoiled" I've always been, with washer/dryer at every house/condo/apartment in which I've lived.

@gardener123 - I doubt it, at least not in NYC. There are simply too many older buildings without built-in units. However, wash-and-fold is already vastly more popular here than DIY laundromats (at least in my old neighborhood), so I can definitely see traditional DIY places losing even more ground to this model.

Thank you all, it's all very interesting information.

None of the information here surprises me, mostly because I know people who worked in NYC for construction companies, companies that rented and managed property and one of my friends used to do work inspecting units for an insurance agent, not to say anything about regular NYC residents I'm friends with.

I was mostly being sarcastic given that recently someone made wild claims about laundry equipment in NYC, sorry.

But in any case, yes, it's good to have even more input from actual NYC residents, thank you!

I've always lived somewhere where I had my own washer/dryer. That was always a requirement; I'd never consider living in a building without an in unit machine or hookup. That being said, I live in a poorer, predominately hispanic neighborhood and there are a lot of laundromats in my area. The laundromats are HUGE and very busy. I'm temped to go check one out in person but the thought of washing anything in a public machine disgusts me.

"there were neighborhood laundries, traditionally Chinese, where the sheets and men's shirts were sent to weekly. Some sent all laundry there as it was where things got returned ironed and folded."

Ah Rococogurl, you are bringing me back - in the '80s, I lived in a low-rise on the upper west side and there was a Chinese laundry like you described across the street. My somewhat decrepit building had 2 washers and 2 dryers (coin operated, natch) in the basement. It was so creepy down there, dim, and with skittering water bugs. I opted most of the time just to bring all my laundry except my intimates across the street to the Chinese laundry. The laundry came back folded crisp and ironed and smelling of that unique Chinese laundry smell of starch and I don't know, not a fragrance per se, but a special clean ironed smell unduplicated anywhere else. And I still had my Wamsutta percale sheets in those days (took them for granted I did); unfolding the sheets from the Chinese laundry, with folds like knife edges, then sleeping in them was wonderful. This whole memory is like Proust's madeleine for me. Thanks!

I have fond memories of a Chinese Laundry in my childhood neighborhood, which was run by a lovely family. The sign "Chinese Laundry" was common in many but not all neighborhoods.

The one from my childhood amazingly is still owned and operated by an asian family. I don't know if they are Chinese, but about 10 years ago it was given a facelift (the first time it had any changes since at least 1960) but still provides the same service. It may be the only one left in NYC. I am sure that they offer more services now. I believe they also take dry cleaning and possible minor alterations. The area is a higher income area in a historic district.

NYC has several laundry companies that have apps and pick up and deliver on demand. Much like Fresh Direct for groceries.

...makes me realize how "spoiled" I've always been, with washer/dryer at every house/condo/apartment in which I've lived.

When hub and I rented an apartment while we were still in college, it did not have a washer or dryer. (It did have a huge pantry, which I loved.) Going to a laundromat and washing for two people wasn't a big deal, though it wasn't fun. We just did it and got it over with each week. The machines didn't cost nearly as much to use then as they do now.

We lived in one other place w/o a washer/dryer, but when we started having kids, I was like, no way am I doing this any more (the weekly haul to the laundromat, with baskets and baskets in tow). We actually moved to another apartment just to get a w/d dryer connection, then went out and bought the biggest ones we could find. lol

From then on, I refused to live anywhere w/o a washer and dryer. Period.

There are still laundromats in our area. One very nice one is very clean and has all Maytag machines, plus a lady you can pay to fold your laundry. I used that one once to wash an oversize, very plush sleeping bag. I had to use a great big washer meant for three loads!

I didn't pay to dry it, just brought it home in a huge clean trash bag and hung it out to dry over the kids' swing set.The weather was hot and it dried much more quickly than I thought it would . But it cost about three times more to do that than I had to pay in the early years of married life.