When the power goes out on laundry day, the inconvenience is not the missing machine. It is the load sitting in the drum, wet, in warm air, going quietly wrong while everybody worries about the refrigerator instead. That load is the only urgent piece of laundry in the house and it is the one nobody thinks of.
The load in the drum when the power goes out
Get it out as soon as you reasonably can. A door may stay latched for a while after everything stops, and once it opens, that load is the first job.
Fabric sitting wet and compressed in a closed drum in warm air takes on a stale smell inside a day, and sometimes a good deal faster than that.
Press the water out by hand and spread the load rather than piling it. Over a rail, over a rack, over the backs of chairs, anywhere air can reach both sides.
Space matters more than anything else here. Two shirts touching each other dry at roughly half the rate of two shirts apart.
If the load was part way through a wash and still holds detergent, keep it separate and remember which one it was. It wants a proper wash with an extra rinse rather than a quick cycle.
Then leave the machine alone. It is not your problem to work on and there is nothing useful to be done with it in the meantime.
Wet laundry in warm still air
When the power goes out, airflow rather than heat is what saves a damp load, and that is the part people get backwards.
A window open on both sides of a room does more than a warm room with no movement in it.
If there is any breeze at all, get the laundry into it. A porch, a covered walkway, a shaded rail outside all beat a still interior.
Turn things over part way through, because whichever side faces the surface stays wet longest.
Heavy items are the ones that will not make it. Towels, bedding and denim hold far too much water to recover on a rack in still warm air.
Be realistic about those. If a load of towels has been damp and heaped since yesterday, plan on washing it again rather than drying it.
What can wait and what cannot
Everything dry in the hamper is fine when the power goes out. It has been sitting there for days already and another few days changes nothing about it.
The wet things are urgent. Anything else being called urgent probably is not.
Sort the dry laundry anyway, since it takes ten minutes and you have the time. It makes the first session afterwards straightforward.
Pull out anything on a deadline and put it in its own bag, so it is not buried when you go.
Anything that came in wet from outside goes with the urgent group rather than into the hamper, because that is exactly how a whole basket ends up smelling.
Everything else goes in the long pile and stays there without any guilt attached.
Storm season laundry
Outages tend to arrive in clusters here, and laundry is one of the things that stacks up behind them.
The habit worth having is being slightly ahead rather than slightly behind. A hamper that is half full when the weather turns is a completely different situation from one that is overflowing.
When a storm is forecast, run the things with no substitute first. Socks, underwear, work clothes and one set of bedding.
Do not start a wash you are not confident of finishing. A load left in a drum is worse than a load left in a hamper.
Keep towels ahead of where you need them. Storm weeks use towels at a rate nothing else does.
None of this takes extra effort. It only takes doing the same laundry a day earlier than you otherwise would.
Carrying a wet load out
Sometimes, once the power goes out and stays out, the sensible answer is to take the whole thing out and run it again properly somewhere else.
Run the fastest spin the fabric allows if the machine ever comes back to life, because that removes more water than any amount of pressing by hand.
Carry damp laundry in a bag that will not leak or a basket with a lid, rather than an open basket on a car seat.
Split it into two containers. A single bag of soaking towels is genuinely hard to lift and awkward through a doorway.
Do not let it sit closed up in the car while you do something else. A warm closed bag is the worst place a damp load can be.
Take the dry laundry in the same trip while you are going anyway, and get the whole week done at once.
Keeping the week from stacking up
The load in the drum is a one off. The week that slides afterwards is the part that actually costs you.
Get back onto a fixed laundry day rather than waiting until things feel normal again, because things feeling normal takes longer than the laundry can wait.
Do the short list first, then a normal week, then clear the backlog over the following fortnight.
Check anything that sat damp for more than a day before you put it away. If there is a smell in it, it needs a soak and a full wash rather than a rinse.
Wash a slightly larger load than you need for a couple of weeks afterwards so you land back in front rather than behind.
And go back to keeping the hamper half empty, which is the only real protection against the next time the power goes out.
Common questions about power goes out
What should I do with a load stuck mid cycle when the power goes out?
Take it out as soon as the door opens, press the water out, and spread it where air can move around it. Keep it separate from everything else, because it still holds detergent and needs a proper wash with an extra rinse.
How long before a damp load is beyond saving?
In warm still air, less than a day. If it has been heaped and closed up overnight, wash it again rather than trying to dry it, because the smell will not come out in a dryer.
Is it better to dry a damp load indoors or outside?
Wherever there is air moving. A shaded spot outside with any breeze beats a still room indoors, and spacing items apart matters more than warmth does.
How do I avoid this happening again during storm season?
Stay slightly ahead. Wash the things with no substitute before the weather turns, keep towels in front of where you need them, and never start a cycle you are not confident of finishing.
The New Orleans part
Gulf air is what makes this a real problem here rather than a mild one, and the whole of the difference is humidity.
In a dry climate a damp load spread over a rail sits for a couple of days without much happening. Here it does not. Warm saturated air means a heap of wet laundry starts to smell in hours rather than days, and it means a spread out load dries slowly even with the windows open. Airflow is the only thing that helps, so a shaded spot with any movement in the air is worth more than the warmest room in the house.
Storm season is the second factor and it is the reason this is worth planning for at all. Outages here often come in runs rather than singly, and a household that was already behind on laundry when the weather turned spends the following fortnight catching up on top of everything else.
Heavy summer rain is the third. Soaked hems, shoes and outer layers arrive in volume and cannot go into a closed hamper to wait, because in this air they will take the whole basket with them. Keep those apart, spread out, and put them at the front of the next session.
Where the stalled load gets finished
A load that has been sitting damp wants a proper wash and plenty of water rather than a hopeful rinse.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Frenchmen Street move far more water per cycle than a home unit, and the drum size means a load that has been sitting damp gets rinsed properly instead of carrying old detergent through to the dryer.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
When the power goes out on laundry day, the only urgent laundry in the house is whatever is already wet. Get it out of the drum as soon as the door opens, press the water out, and spread it where air can reach both sides, because fabric heaped damp in warm air takes on a stale smell within hours. Keep that load separate, since it still holds detergent and wants a proper wash with an extra rinse rather than a quick cycle. Everything dry can wait without any consequence at all. Afterwards, get back onto a fixed laundry day quickly and keep the hamper half empty through storm season.
WaveMAX New Orleans is at 4001 Frenchmen St, easy to reach from New Orleans and the surrounding area. If you have a load that will not fit at home, call us at 504-881-7239.