I’ve never been so lucky as to have my own washing and drying machine.
For the past six years I’ve lived in apartment buildings which had two janky washers and dryers in the basement, and cost a ton to operate.
I would easily spend $5 to do a load of laundry, especially factoring in all the extra drying cycles that were necessary to get my clothes dry most of the time. Now I’m feeling so blessed to have a real home, with a utility room including a washer and dryer, right in my own place. I had forgotten, however, how extremely hot this equipment makes the air in the utility room, and that fluctuation in air temperature became relevant pretty soon after moving in. We got settled into the house and soon realized that it stayed very cold inside. It seemed strange, because the air temperature settings weren’t as low as the ambient air temperature felt. We just chalked it up to having a more powerful AC unit than we had become accustomed to, and forgot about the extreme chill in the air for the most part. It was only once our monthly utility bills started rolling in that we realized something was wrong. Every month the energy bill was through the roof, and we had no idea what was sucking up so much power. It wasn’t until two months later that I figured out the problem; our thermostat was positioned too close to the hot utility room, causing an artificially high air temperature reading and making our central cooling system run overtime!