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Winter break marks the halfway point of the school year, and suddenly, it seems like every student in the residence halls has adopted the same laundry schedule. Laundry rooms are getting crowded, and laundry Sundays have turned into laundry Mondays — or maybe even laundry Wednesdays if procrastination comes along.

It’s the end of a long day, and first-year student Maddie Sales, a resident of Westfall Hall at Colorado State University, finally starts the dreadful process she’s been putting off. She goes down to the laundry room with her detergent and sorted bag of clothes. Going in, she notices an annoyed-looking student staring down at their phone, surrounded by laundry machines filled with clothes — yet none of them are running. Sales scans the room and spots piles of laundry messily thrown on top of the machines.

“I just don’t understand why people leave their laundry in the machines,” Sales said. “Everyone I know sets a timer to pick up their clothes when they’re done, which is the respectful thing to do.”

Some residence halls at CSU only have about six washers and dryers per wing, while others have up to 10. There are so many students in one residential hall, so on busy days, finding available machines can feel impossible.

“If I want to do laundry, I usually have to go on a weekend night when most people are out or early in the morning,” said Lainey Boeckman, a resident of Summit Hall.

Holding students accountable for their laundry habits can be difficult. While CSU can’t enforce a laundry room policy to carry out considerate practices, students can help de-escalate this issue by being mindful and using tools like LaundryView.

LaundryView is a website designed to track washing and drying cycles, showing when specific machines are available or idle, meaning the machine cycle has run its course but the clothes haven’t been taken out. This allows students to monitor machine availability and plan their laundry schedules based on that.

If more students used LaundryView, laundry room overcrowding could be reduced. Although CSU can’t force students to use the application, promoting it with signs around common spaces in the dorms could go a long way.

Another helpful idea could be for resident assistants and housing management to send out weekly reminders about respectful laundry room practices. While not all students will read and internalize them, all it takes are some mentors and peers to help the process move along.

Maybe CSU needs a futuristic laundry machine that holds your student ID hostage until you retrieve your clothes — now that would hold students accountable. But for now, these easy and small tips and tricks will have to do.

In all honesty, laundry room chaos is just part of the college experience, and it teaches students a little bit about responsibility, accountability and patience. While there isn’t a perfect fix that can hold everyone to the right habits, simple steps like setting timers, using LaundryView and listening to reminders from RAs can make a change, even if it’s small.

So until they invent a laundry machine that sends you a personal notification or, better yet, folds your clothes for you, we’ll just have to keep navigating the spin cycles together.

Reach Ava Harris at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.