Laundry

The 16-year-old Southwest Philadelphia boy apparently wanted to impress his father with his toughness when he shot and killed a man who had been in a dispute with his father last month, the prosecutor said. Instead, the boy, Michael Sudler, shocked his father by shooting James Joyner, 46, to death inside a crowded laundromat at 55th Street and Chester Avenue, as his father watched, said Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron. Yesterday, Municipal Judge Morton Krase ordered Sudler, of 56th Street near Beaumont, to stand trial on murder and weapons charges in the Jan. 24 slaying.

You have to hand it to the manufacturers of washers and dryers. They've succeeded in making laundry, a humdrum household chore, seem like something family members are fighting for the chance to do. Now that's marketing! Judging by the offerings at this year's Kitchen and Bath Industry Show, the amenities of the laundry room have become as important as the appliances themselves. "The trend is toward treating a laundry room as if it were a suite," says Audrey Reed-Granger, a spokeswoman for Whirlpool Corp.

Doing the laundry seems easy enough: open washer, insert clothes, add water and soap. But it turns out there's a right way and a wrong way to do the wash - and most of us are probably doing it wrong. Advances in the technology of laundry - everything from the fabrics we wear to the detergents we select to the washers and dryers we use - has rendered a lot of the advice our mothers gave us obsolete. In fact, says Cheryl Mendelson, author of Laundry: The Home Comforts Book of Caring for Clothes and Linens, people seem to know very little about the process nowadays.

Thwap goes the shirt, dripping wet and sudsy, as it is pounded down on the washing stone. Thwap, thwap go the pants and saris as they are pummeled in the water nearby. All around there are washers - hundreds and hundreds of wiry men and women, knee-deep in murky water, pounding clothing clean as it has been pounded in India for countless generations. Six thousand of them come here each day, toiling in Bombay's central municipal washing place, known as the Mahalakshmi Dhobi Ghat.

When officers Robert Walls and Joseph Domico saw a foot sticking out of a pile of dirty laundry, they knew they had their man. With a little detective work and a lot of legwork, Walls and Domico managed to track down two alleged killers wanted in the death of an Old City lawyer last week. "I saw a foot with an ankle attached," said Walls. "They were hiding in a closet under a pile of clothes. " Yesterday, both cops talked about the daring arrests, made after two anonymous tips from neighborhood informants led them to the two thugs early Saturday morning and ended a seven-day, citywide dragnet.

Although the days when fresh milk and bread were delivered right to the door every morning have passed, Bill Willis has an idea for a home-delivery service he thinks will be popular in the Swarthmore area. He plans to deliver freshly washed laundry to his customers' doors. Willis, a Wallingford resident since 1970, owns three stores on Park Avenue in Swarthmore. When the video store renting one of the stores from him announced plans to move, Willis decided to open a laundry service there.

This was not how N. Barba figured she'd spend her Thanksgiving. Before meeting friends for holiday brunch, Barba decided to do a couple of loads of laundry in the basement of her West Philadelphia apartment house. She laid a quarter into a flat, three-hole coin slot in the dryer, then quickly remembered that the machine did not work. So she poked the ring finger of her left hand into the bottom of the coin slot to retrieve the quarter. But the laundry gods were not kind.

If home laundry centers were designed by working mothers, rather than male architects, builders and contractors, you can be sure there would be far fewer washers and dryers in basements, garages and mudrooms. Putting the laundry equipment in a basement makes about as much sense as putting the dishwasher down there. Imagine routinely lugging dirty dishes and pots and pans up and down a flight of stairs. But if that thought is ludicrous for dishes, why is it all right for blue jeans, bath towels and bedding?

Someone in northwest Philadelphia has gotten himself into a load of hot water with apartment dwellers, apartment building owners and police. All for a mere fistful of quarters for each time he's knocked over a Maytag or a Whirlpool. The burglaries of washing machines and dryers in apartment buildings in the Mount Airy-Germantown area don't top the Police Department's laundry list of crimes, but they have caused the victims considerable inconvenience and expense. The thefts started with the small "vaults" of quarters on the laundry machines.

A new urban indignity is confronting some residents of a normally serene section of Southwest Philadelphia. At least four people who hung their laundry on backyard clotheslines in recent weeks have lost their wash to thieves. In some cases, law-abiding launderers find all that's left of wash day are clothespins on the ground. The victims included Police Officer Charlie Sarkioglu, the 4th District community relations officer. "I know now to be tentative and hesitant to do it, in the light of the fact the clothes were taken," said Sarkioglu of his family's custom of leaving laundry to line-dry in the breeze in nice weather.

Good thing my clothes can't feel anything or talk. If they could, they'd surely berate me. I used to bathe them in nice warm water. These days, they're thrashing about in cold. From my viewpoint, it's all good. Cold water means they don't shrink, they don't fade, I save money by not using hot water, and — more to the point of this column — I'm helping the environment by not using as much electricity. According to most estimates, heating the water accounts for about 80 to 85 percent of the energy consumed by a typical batch of laundry.

The answer to the hottest question in town: Walter Abrams. The former French Laundry sous chef (six years) is winging his way east to Le Bec-Fin , where he will become executive chef for new owner (and his former Laundry-mate) Nicolas Fanucci. This is a package deal, as Abrams' girlfriend, former French Laundry pastry chef Jennifer Smith, will become LBF's exec pastry chef. The South Florida-born, Colombia-reared Abrams left San Francisco hot spot Spruce as chef de cuisine this week.

I was going to write about Raise, a stain remover, but the suggestions for designing an efficient laundry room were so good that I thought I'd share some of them with you. I haven't thought about this for a few years, because our laundry-room setup works well, and the front-loading washer and dryer that we bought in 2006 to replace the 22-year-old models we inherited have given us little trouble. Even when I had considered replacing the clunky old sink into which the washer drains with one of those white plastic tubs, the plumbing changes would have been pricey and the drainage is all that we ask it to do anyway.

Question : We bought a raised ranch with a full lower level from an owner of 35 years who disclosed that several times, after rains of five inches, the laundry room area took on water and needed to be "broomed out" (the back door opens to the driveway from the laundry room). We find that several times a year - when heavy rains or large winter thaws come - the laundry room does take on one to two inches of water, which appears to come through the concrete basement floor where it meets the cinder block walls.

Before Gabriel Mandujano launched a door-to-door business a year ago to address the region's laundry needs with bicycles, he worked in community development. That required a sensitivity to the needs of neighborhoods, a quality Mandujano insists he has not lost. But business is business. And Mandujano's business needs have led to a decision that has generated complaints from the South Street neighborhood where his Wash Cycle Laundry took root 13 months ago with a mission to not only make a profit, but to serve the community, too. At Mandujano's request, his base of operation, a laundromat on South Street just off 16th Street, was declared off limits to the public Tuesday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., effective Oct. 24. The change was needed, said Walker Gilmore, owner of South Street Coin Wash, to accommodate Wash Cycle's growing customer base - clients largely outside the laundromat's South Street West neighborhood.

Adapted from a recent online discussion. Question: How old is too old to live at home? I'm 24 and employed but live in a very large, expensive city. My parents are happy to have me live at home so I can save my money and eventually buy a place, rather than throw money away on rent. Some of my friends think this is a great situation, but the majority of people think this is weird. What do you think? Answer: Depends on the details. Are you an independent person who occupies space in your parents' home, or are your parents doing your laundry and cooking your food?

GENEVA - A United Nations panel has urged Ireland to investigate allegations that for decades women and girls sent to work in Catholic laundries were tortured. The panel said the government failed in its obligation to oversee the nun-run laundries "where it is alleged that physical, emotional abuses and other ill-treatment were committed. " It has asked for compensation for the victims. Human rights groups say young women were abused after being sent to the so-called Magdalene Laundries, a network of 10 workhouses that operated in Ireland from the 1920s to the mid-1990s.

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend and I will be attending a milestone birthday party for a friend of his. The fiancee of the birthday guy stated on the invitation, "There will be a surprise during the evening. " It has been suggested that a stripper "may" be the surprise. Abby, I realize this might be OK for some people and it's just for fun, but I'd be uncomfortable if this happens. My boyfriend knows my feelings, but I don't know if we would risk being ridiculed if we left the party.

Question: What do you do if you've told your spouse several times that you feel like you do all the heavy lifting, and still nothing changes? Then what? Answer: You figure out how much you're willing to do, and you do only that. It may seem like bean-counting, but it's actually an important step in figuring out what is wrong between you. It's possible for half of a couple to be very high-functioning and to have unrealistic expectations of what the other half needs to contribute.

At 6 feet 6 and 300 pounds, Siegfried Moore would be an undesirable opponent in a fight. But the Logan man picked the wrong person to tangle with on Aug. 4, when he allegedly pounced on Devaughn Smith, one of two people he overpowered and killed earlier this month, police say. As Moore stabbed him repeatedly, police say, Smith was able to turn the blade on his attacker and plunge it deep into his stomach. Smith, 19, died of his injuries. Moore fled - and might have gotten away with murder, police say. But his victim's blow punctured Moore's lung, and he needed a doctor's attention.