Photo by Rick Geary

Of all the places people go, no place, I’d guess, is more hated than the laundromat.

Dear MA.: I have been told that five items in a dryer will dry faster than one item alone. I don *t get it. Mind giving me a cluef — Tadd Whitmore, San Diego

Yo, Matt: Every time I go to the laundromat, I see this sign that says the dryer works better if you put in three loads of wash instead of one. Of course I ignore the sign because it doesn’t make any sense. So why is it there? — DJ, San Diego

Since 1 consider shopping marginally more entertaining than doing laundry, I once considered simply throwing out all my dirty clothes each week and replacing them with new threads rather than face a stultifying two hours in a hot, noisy, dirty room, up to my ankles in used fabric-softener sheets, with squadrons of restless and unruly children, broken dryers that you don’t know are broken until you’ve already put your money in, and soap product dispensers that dispense nothing and for which you can get no refund because the laundry owners have nothing to do with the vending machines so you can only get your 75 cents back by camping out until the dude comes to refill the thing only nobody knows exactly when that will be and what’s more they really don’t care about you or the vending machine or the 75 cents or the broken dryers or the screaming kids or the strange black spots that got all over your clothes because the previous dryer user put in a wetsuit, five ballpoint pens, M&Ms, and.... Whew, there, I feel much better. Of all the places people go — and I include here the dentist, the DMV and the IRS, no place, I’d guess, is more hated than the laundromat. Something should be done about it. But anyway, it does seem that every one has that mysterious sign that seems to be encouraging us to cram the dryer as full of stuff as we can get it to achieve optimum dryness in the shortest time. If you’re only washing one load, should you borrow wet clothes from one of those people with garbage bags full of what is clearly a semester’s worth of reeking Levi’s? Maybe so, according to the experts.

The key to our mystery lies not so much in the dryer itself but in its exhaust port that vents air to the outside. In all commercial dryers and some bottom-of-the-line home dryers, there’s a moisture detector in the port that measures the air’s water content as it whooshes past. As long as damp air is being vented, the thermostat keeps the heat up inside the dryer drum. But the dampness-measuring gizmo can be fooled into thinking your clothes are dry if you don’t have a good tumbling action going inside the dryer. This requires a sufficiently large quantity of clothes and also a good mix of different sizes and weights. Too few items will tend to clump together and stick to the drum. Air will then just slide by your lump of duds and fool the moisture sensor into thinking everything inside is dry. You also have problems if you put in, say, four sheets and a pair of heavy cotton socks. The sheets will dry much faster than the socks, and the minuscule amount of dampness remaining in the dryer drum will be the sensor’s signal to cool it. And you’ll pull out four dry sheets and two soggy socks. Another dryer mystery unraveled.

The more expensive home dryers have their moisture sensors inside the dryer drum, eliminating the need to cater to the machine’s wants and needs. As if life weren’t difficult enough.