Parent life / A parent’s recollections, 2013–2014
A Choate Family's Laundry Policy, Revised Annually
On a boarding-school parents' forum, one mother explained her family's position on the laundry service. It changed every year, and every year it was correct.
In November 2013, on College Confidential's prep school parents' board, a mother who posts as ChoatieMom summarized her family's laundry history at Choate.
Freshman year, her son did his own, because, she wrote, that was obviously the morally correct thing to do. Also, you could buy a brand-new washer and dryer for what the laundry service charged.
Sophomore year, the school negotiated a price with the service that made it only slightly more expensive than what he had been spending in quarters. So, obviously, the morally correct thing to do was let him use it.
Two weeks into junior year, he decided the service was not good and wanted to do it himself. He handled the cancellation. His parents split the refund with him for being so cost-conscious.
Her conclusion: "whatever ChoatieFamily decides regarding laundry is the morally correct thing to do."
The policy reversed itself twice, and the family's confidence in it never wavered once. I have run a household on exactly this principle for sixteen years.
The next April, on the forum's annual laundry thread, parents compared notes. One said her daughter had used the service freshman year and been happy with it, "other than the occasional missing sock or mystery bra," but started doing her own laundry because she kept missing the pickup. Another said her son, offered the choice between the service and its cash value, picked the service, because he was getting used to so many new things at once that one less worry seemed wise. She thought that was mature.
Someone asked ChoatieMom whether her son irons. "Nothing I've ever purchased requires ironing," she replied. He did his laundry at the same time every week, she said, studied while it ran and stayed with the machines so nothing wrinkled and nobody else was kept waiting. The campus machines were now free and in the building next to his dorm.
Reading in front of a washing machine, as a high school junior. That is not a laundry policy. That is a person.
The eldest started doing her own laundry this fall, at her own request. The first load was everything she owned, together, on hot. Several things are now pink that were not pink. She has declared this her aesthetic. The second load she separated by color, unprompted, and stood in front of the machine reading for the whole cycle.
My wife says that was the morally correct thing to do. I agree. Last year I said the opposite, and I was right then too.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- College Confidential: The annual boarding school dirty laundry thread (April 2014) talk.collegeconfidential.com
- College Confidential: Miscellaneous Life Ramblings, page 2 (November 2013) talk.collegeconfidential.com
- College Confidential: A minimalist guide to packing for boarding school (April 2017) talk.collegeconfidential.com
- College Confidential: How to bring stuff to boarding school? (August 2013) talk.collegeconfidential.com
- Choate: Frequently Asked Questions for New Students & Parents choate.edu