It’s a mad, mad world when high technology replaces Mom (sort of). But for Ithaca College students, a month’s load of laundry may no longer be a reason for a weekend visit home.

Let’s say you’re a busy IC student, it’s late Thursday night, you have a huge paper due in the morning for psychology class, and you have to cram for an economics test you’re taking two hours later. And you haven’t got a thing left to wear! Every stitch of clothing you own is piled in the corner of your room and it’s all just too grubby to don. You have no choice but to wash something. And while you’re at it you might as well wash and dry everything, because you are planning to be out and about all weekend.

But you just can’t spare two hours to sit in the laundry room.

No sweat: LaundryView to the rescue! With this system, you simply load the washer, transfer the clean laundry to the dryer, and fold (or heap) when it’s all done. In the meantime, you can stay in your room and continue to work. Much more efficient, and much more fun.

Here’s where the fun comes in: You just go online and visit LaundryView, then click on any of the laundry rooms at Ithaca College to see how many washers and dryers are empty. A jiggling, dancing icon means a machine is in use. Once the laundry is in, you click to see its progress. You might see a message that says “est. time remaining 6 min,” or “cycle complete 60 minutes ago.” If that’s too much work, request an e-mail alert when the laundry is done.

“It’s a time management thing,” says Chris Wyland ’07. “For three years I had to schedule hours for laundry. The washers would be full, then the dryers. I would wait ’til I didn’t have anything [clean] to wear. The entire floor of my closet was full of hampers. Now I can check it out before I ever start. If there are a lot of people doing laundry, maybe I will do it later or the next day.”

At the beginning of the academic year the story of IC’s cool laundry system made headlines on TV news shows and in newspapers around the country, and even as far away as Japan. President Peggy R. Williams couldn’t help but use the opportunity to applaud Ithaca College for some of its other attributes. To the media she quipped: “If you think LaundryView is cutting edge, you should check out our academic programs.”

Among students, the consensus is that the system is “cool.” Emily Sugarman ’09 gets a kick out of it. “I crack up when I see the washers vibrate on screen,” she says.

Parents may be in for a surprise when their college students come home without several bags of laundry. But they can relax in the knowledge that the kids are keeping their rooms tidy now, with so much free time that used to be spent in the laundry room. (Almost had you there, didn’t we?)