Yesterday, there was something that I had to do in the morning. By the time that I got to On The Rise, where each guest can do laundry once a week, I had time to put my clothes in the washing machine but not enough time for them to get dry in the drier. I had to leave my wet clothes in a garbage bag in my bin at On The Rise overnight, so that I wouldn't be late for school.
Today, I took my wet clothes, in their garbage bag, to the laundromat in Quincy where I used to spend at least $40/month to do my laundry when I was living at the crisis unit at South Shore Mental Health, as a client of the Department of Mental Health. That psychiatric facility did not have a washer or a drier. Since one of the things that mental health care providers often judge clients about is the cleanliness of their clothes, it's another example of how that system frequently makes people fail at the tests it sets for them. If you are a client at that facility and you don't have the money to take your clothes to the laundromat, and there's nobody from your life outside the facility to bring you clean clothes, you'll be wearing your dirty clothes until you leave. That's in addition to there being no sink in the unit, which means that you have to go to the restroom that's outside the unit every time that you need to wash your hands or to get water from a tap for anything other than drinking.
I washed my clothes again and dried them. Then, I took some of them to my storage unit, because my locker at the Pine Street Inn is the size of a high school locker. My textbooks and school supplies take about half the space that I had before for clothes.
I was able to do some of my homework at the laundromat, but most of my day was spent on the one chore of trying to get my laundry done.
That's part of what it means to be homeless, and most people don't understand that.
What most people also don't know is that a lot of homeless people don't have lockers at shelters, because there aren't enough lockers for everyone. Homeless people usually have to wait months, sometimes years, to get lockers. Sometimes they never get them.
When you see a homeless person carrying around several bags, think about how you would feel, physically and mentally, if you had to carry everything around with you all day, every day.
Copyright L. Kochman, January 26, 2016 @ 6:55 p.m.
