I don’t know what it is about New Yorkers, or maybe it’s just my colleagues in my office, but I don’t seem to know anyone who does their own laundry. A number of my colleagues have laundry in their buildings, yet they don’t do laundry themselves. They have their laundry dropped off at a neighborhood cleaners’ and then come back a few days later to pick it up. A few others are using tech startup companies’ apps to have their laundry picked up from their apartments and sent back, all neatly folded and pressed. It’s like hearing about people doing their own laundry is a rarity. We do our laundry in our basement, but we had to get a few jackets of Chris’s dry-cleaned, so I was lucky enough to find a reasonably priced cleaner just two blocks from our apartment. I noticed they had a sign posted for cleaning leather bags, so I asked the worker how much it would cost to clean my small Kate Spade bag. “For your bag? Eight-five dollars,” she said. “It’s expensive because we outsource it!”

Eighty-five dollars to clean a bag that cost less than four times that same amount? No, thanks. People are way too high maintenance in this neighborhood if that is really a considered a “reasonable” price.