Laundry Problems

You guys, the coffee table is still there. Every time I back out of the driveway, I want to run it over. It's been prematurely aggravating my road rage for 5 weeks now. Sorry, neighborhood. Our landlord stopped by earlier this week to check into a theory I had about something else and as he saw the coffee table, he asked, "Is that yours?" I just looked at him and didn't say anything. He then replied, "Point taken."

Back to my theory. I had noticed that for about 4-5 months now, our electricity bill has been out of control. Upwards of $80 a month (on average) for about 1,500 square feet of apartment where two people live. We had been paying less in the summer when we were blasting window AC units and fans every day! I was convinced something was up, so I called the power company and the landlord to inquire. The power company suggested I perform a breaker test, to which I responded, "Of course! That is a great idea. Why didn't I think of that!" Then I asked, "What is a breaker test?" Apparently, you go to your fuse box and switch all of those thingies to the "off" position. Those thingies are called breakers by the way, hence the breaker test. Then you go make sure that your electric meter stops spinning. Next, you turn each thingy ("breaker") back on slowly, one at a time, and watch the meter so that you can isolate what part of the house is using the most electricity. While this may sound quite simple in theory, I would like to report that practically, it is very difficult. Especially since the electric meter is outside and your fuse box is in the basement. And especially when you mistake the water meter for the electric meter and you are convinced that every time you turn the hot water on, your electricity usage skyrockets. Long story short, I have much to learn about how electricity and water works. I did watch a useful youtube video that teaches you how to read your electricity meter and I did learn the word "breaker" so that is 2 points, at least.

As I was poking my way around the debris and the filth of the basement, trying to find our fuse box, Guy came downstairs to do laundry. Shocker! 6 out of 7 days of the week, these people are doing laundry. This is confusing and/or annoying for many reasons:
1. They are disgusting. Why is laundry the one thing that they want to be semi-hygienic about? (I say semi-hygienic, because washing a towel stained with poop in the same load as your clothes can't really be considered hygienic).
2. Every time they do laundry, they do at the most, 4 pieces of clothing per load. I often lug my huge laundry basket down the two flights of stairs to find that the washer is busy spinning precisely one pair of jeans and one sock, while the dryer is furiously working on drying a poop-stained towel. You think I'm exaggerating, but as I wrote this, I decided to go downstairs to see if there was any type of piss or shit-soiled items laying about as per usual, and oh what do you know? I did not stage this, I swear.

3. I am almost positive they do not own an iron or they have not figured out how to properly use one b/c on some mornings, Guy goes down to the basement and uses only the dryer to "dry" one shirt, aka de-wrinkle his ugly button-up. I suppose he has to look nice for whatever douchebag convention he is going to.
4. Did I mention we have started finding deflated (or uninflated?) balloons in the washer? The cigarette butts have mostly disappeared, only to be replaced by these latex balloons which clearly can mean only one of two things: they are huffing nitrites or they are drug mules.

Anyways, as he was pulling things out of the dryer, I switched off all the breaker thingies to our unit and walked back upstairs. When I came back down a little bit later to switch the breaker thingies back on, I noticed that he had left all his stuff askew. How I noticed that this was different from just every other day when he leaves his shit really fucking askew, I don't know. It must have been instinct. Before turning our power back on, I walked over to the washer and dryer and tried to start both of them. Nothing happened. Part of me was really pleased that I had inadvertently interrupted Guy's laundry while I was performing my breaker test. But that quickly passed as I realized that we have been footing the bill for every single tiny load of laundry they have been doing for god knows how long! When I had called our landlord to ask him about how laundry expenses were shared, he insisted that one unit was responsible for the dryer while the other paid for the washer. Either he was completely confused and we have been paying for both machines since we moved in, or else at some point, the people downstairs unplugged one machine and plugged it back into our outlet. Thus, my theory is that sometime around mid November (when our corresponding electric bill spiked substantially), the people downstairs plugged the machine that they were paying for into our outlet. Further, I believe we have been paying for all of their laundry usage since that time, including every single excessive load they do, resulting in considerable overcharges to our bill. I hypothesize that by unplugging both machines from our outlet and plugging both back into THEIR outlet, our electric bill will drop substantially this month. I further hypothesize that when it is proven that I am correct, I am going to freak the fuck out, both from being pissed about paying for all of the electricity we did not use and from the excitement that my little science experiment was a success. my dad will be so proud.

Our landlord keeps downplaying the fact that both machines were plugged into our meter, saying that laundry usage shouldn't spike a bill that much. This may be true in a normal household, but I cannot stress how often our machines are running. Not only is there a lot of disgusting things covered in feces to clean, they all need to be cleaned in groupings of no more than 4 items at once. I have been going out and writing down the kilowatts reading from both our meter and their meter (thank you, youtube) every few days to track any changes. It's that serious, people. I am one of 7 people in the world who enjoys Microsoft Excel and I have no problem creating a visually appealing graph and sending it to the landlord. Our billing cycle runs from about mid-month to mid-month so I will report the results in approximately 2 weeks. I don't want to give anything away, but... based on initial statistics, I will be e-mailing my dad a direct link to my follow-up post.