Apartment neighbors consistently use laundry machines for 3 weeks, leaving neighbors with no way to do laundry: 'They likely are running a business'

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Jul 4, 2026 10:00 AM EDT

What if you could never do laundry in your own apartment building?

Sharing a space with other people might not be the easiest thing we do in the course of our lives. In fact, it can be quite difficult. We don't always know where to draw boundaries with the people we live with; we just know that we have to. And what if the people we live with don't have any respect for us? What then? How are you supposed to share the space with someone who doesn't care about respecting your own boundaries and the space you share? This is sometimes the nature of living in an apartment building. You don't choose the people you live in the same building as, and you might have different priorities. For example, you might prioritize keeping the space clean and usable for everyone. They might prioritize… anything else.

That's the issue that this apartment renter found herself in when she moved into a new building. You're not just paying for the space in which you live; you're paying for access to amenities. And if a laundry room is on the list, then you should be able to use it. Sure, it's not a private laundry room, but you should be able to have access to it when you need it. But that's not what happened here. What should have been a shared space was commandeered by a certain family, and things were starting to get suspicious.

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Cheezburger Image 10644020224 — A woman loads a towel in a washing machine

New neighbors have been doing laundry continuously for 3 weeks now.

I don't know if this is even something I can complain to management about but our new neighbors have been using all the machines since they have moved in. I think they either have friends and family visiting or running a side business doing laundry

because there is no way it's all theirs. It's two washers, two dryers for the building. I hear them going back and forth sometimes and they have a metal cart that's always there with bags of laundry being traded in and out. I tried to talk to the lady to ask if I could use the washer next

but she either doesn't speak English or ignored me. I get up at 6 am to go to work and they're doing laundry. I come home, they're doing laundry. I go to sleep, more laundry. I have clothes piling up and I don't want to have to take it to a laundromat but I can't seem to catch a time when they're not using the machines.

You can't use the laundry room all day every day if you have neighbors. You can't just prevent them from doing laundry because you're hogging the machines. And why do you need those machines for so long? Can't you just do your laundry and go? Apparently not, for the family that this renter was sharing the space with. They were obviously using it for purposes outside of its design, and it was starting to get fishy. Keep reading to see the full scope of the story, and then see what commenters had to say about the whole debacle.