Clean Clothes of Kindness

Many Kindness Activist acts happen spontaneously – paying for someone’s gas at the gas station, buying lottery tickets for strangers, sitting down and ordering something from a stranger’s Amazon Wish List.

Some Kindness Activist acts take preparation – Cups of Kindness (handing out free hot cocoa, coffee, and tea), the Little Yellow Free Pantry (keeping a free pantry stocked so neighbors can get needed food), and for sure the annual Kindness Yard Sale.

But other Kindness Activist acts don’t necessarily take a lot of preparation, but they percolate a long time before actually coming to life…  And that’s what happened with Clean Clothes of Kindness!!

When the producers from the CBS show “On The Road With Steve Hartman” contacted me last October saying they wanted to do a story on Kindness Activist, they requested that I come up with a good kind act that they could follow me on and film.  My partner David and I thought long and hard about what that might be, and he came up with a terrific one – go to a laundromat and pay for strangers’ laundry!  I LOVED it, the producers didn’t, and so it didn’t get done for the tv story.

But I have been thinking about it for the last 4 months and last night we finally made it happen!  We stocked up on dryer sheets and Tide detergent pods and hit the local laundromat!

We chose to go late on a Saturday night.  There were not a lot of people there (safer Covid-wise, but not as much opportunity to help as many people as we would’ve liked).  But it was REALLY FUN!

Here’s how it went down:

 Clean Clothes of Kindness Video

Like I said in the video, we will be back and do it again!  We learned a few lessons that we will definitely apply next time:

1.     It is better if David approaches males and asks if we can pay.  Accepting help (especially in the form of money) from a female is difficult for many men.

2.     We will try at a different time of day when there might be more people.

3.     We will introduce ourselves to the laundromat worker when we go in, so she/he doesn’t suspect us of doing something weird like selling Tide Pods 😊 (No, maam, seriously, we are just GIVING them to people and paying for laundry tonight!)

4.     We might bring a friend with us who speaks Spanish.  Many of the people there were Spanish speakers and they might have accepted the gift more rapidly if it had been explained in their native language.

My favorite people that we helped were a young Hispanic couple.  Once we got past the language barrier, they smiled and allowed us to pay.  But their smiles grew bigger and BIGGER when they watched us pay for OTHERS.  They understood that the act was simply of kindness, not of pity.  It was an act of sharing with the world, and as they watched others also share, they knew they were part of a little club.  It was lovely.

This kind act reminded again how privileged I am to have a washer and dryer right in my home.  To be able to go to my basement and throw in a load of laundry at any time of the night or day…  To not have to haul huge, heavy bags of laundry out in the cold…  To be able to savor folding the soft, warm towels instead of hurry to get it done and go back home…

I am excited to do this act of kindness again.  We have lots of laundry soap and dryer sheets left, all we need to do is make time and open our hearts.

Kindness Activist funds spent:  $24.99 on supplies, $32.75 on quarters in washers and dryers.

P.S. – I used a word in the video that I am working hard to rid my vocabulary of, “crazy”.  I said, “I hope people do not think we are crazy”.  I am sorry.  Please do as I say and not as I did in this video and work hard to eliminate that word from your vocabulary. 

P.P.S. – I also mistakenly referred to CBS as NBC in the video…  My bad.  Sorry Steve!