Scrubbing your skivvies on Sunday may never be as much fun as, say, brunch, but a new wave of laundry-world changes are at least making it less of a chore. From click-for-pickup websites to chandelier-bedecked dry cleaners to all-green everything, New York has never offered so many choices for doing the wash—or paying someone else to do it for you. Case in point: the 24/7 DashLocker, a fully automated laundry service now open on the Upper East Side (1566 Second Ave., nr. 81st St.; dashlocker.com) and rolling out three new locations by year’s end. Any time, day or night, just drop your dirty clothes, dry cleaning, and even scuffed-up shoes in a locker (you register online), and within 36 hours, you’ll get an alert when they’re ready for pickup—no human interaction required. And that’s just the start: In this guide, we asked fashion insiders to divulge their preferred neighborhood cleaners, scouted well-designed gear for the day-of schlep, and spent 24 hours in a laundromat, where we encountered exactly the awesome mix of city folk you’d hope to find in an all-night laundry.

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• Archive: “Guides”
• Table of Contents: Oct 8, 2012 issue of New York | Subscribe!