Dear Ms. Manners,

Last night, I finally decided to do laundry. After a week of fishing through the dirty clothes I had already thrown in the hamper and running them through the smell test to see if they were suitable to wear, I caved.

I sorted my whites from my colors, my colds from my warms and then heaved my gigantic pile down three flights of stairs. I opened up the first machine that said “0 minutes” but there were wet clothes inside. And then I opened the next one. Nope, clothes in there too. Ms. Manners, there were WET CLOTHES IN ALL OF THEM. I didn’t know what to do so I abandoned the laundry room and my laundry spirit. Now I’m here, writing to you in a shirt I’ve already worn three times this week. Help?

— Defeated and Dirty at Stanford

Dear Defeated,

This is a problem you will have to deal with throughout the rest of your time at Stanford. There are several different approaches to the laundry dilemma. The first and most obvious would be to simply remove wet pile from the machine. Unfortunately, you must now struggle through another conflict — where to put the pile.

Here’s an option to consider before you make that decision. If you’re feeling pretty peeved or just want some new clothes, rifle through the random wet piles and add some of their clothes to your laundry. You can even put some of those ugly socks your mom gave you into their pile to compensate — it would be like a good ‘ol fashioned clothes swap. Sort of. Unfortunately, the guy down the hall will probably recognize his favorite boxers when you parade down the hall in them, so you might not be able to wear your new digs outside of your room.

If stealing doesn’t float your boat or you’re just lazy, there are three pile-placing options. The first would be to find a surface that isn’t covered with either more wet laundry or nasty Tide n’ lint ick and then plop the wet clothes there. The second would be to simply drop the laundry on the ground. I’d highly advise you against this one unless if you want people in your residence to hate you or the future of your own clothes to be endangered. (And who wouldn’t, really?)

The third and most complicated would be to place the wet laundry into a drier. You will find yourself more inclined to do this if you recognize that certain pieces belong to close friends — they would not be pleased if their favorite t-shirt fraternized with the nasty surfaces of the laundry room. While people will appreciate the gesture, don’t go so far as to actually turn on a dryer setting. Nobody brought their dolls to college so there is no need to create a wardrobe of teeny-weeny clothing. And besides, Stanford laundry machines already seem to have the uncanny knack of shrinking everything into Barbie sizes.

Now, if you don’t want to deal the ordeals of moving (or swiping) the laundry, you’re left with a limited number of options. Either spam the chat-list of your residence, asking the insensitive brutes to remove their stuff. Or just hide out in the laundry room in your soon-to-be-useless Halloween costume, waiting for the people to collect their wet laundry so that you can confront them. That’d be fun. I’d advise bringing a book and some snacks, though — you might be there for awhile.

Then again, you could just give up and do your laundry next Sunday. That shirt doesn’t smell that bad. Really.

(P.S. For those of you on the other side of this dilemma, check out www.laundryalert.com, password “stan9568.” This website has features that range from letting you see how many machines are free in your residence to letting you program laundry alerts to your cell phone. With a ridiculously nifty site like this, you have absolutely no excuse for leaving your laundry in too long).