Yard Card and Laundry and A note to Parents
Though most of our sponsor mid family has the Yard Card, they prefer to use a debit card with a rewards/cashback function to minimize what they carry in their wallet.
Typical Saturday -- 5-6 bags of plebe laundry cycling at our house. If they don't know how to do it, but look at me expectantly, I teach the women and my husband teaches the men. Time to grow up! USNA Laundry Horror Stories abound. The upper class come by on Sunday afternoon with a bag or two of laundry, their Starbucks and Panera Bread take-out, some homework to do, and settle in for the afternoon. Plebe parents: when thinking of things to give to the sponsor family, Sam's Club size laundry detergent is welcome!
Note to parents: ensuring your plebe can sew on a button, mend a small tear, put an emergency pant hem up with tape or a safety pin, do basic laundry, understand the difference between a Clorox bleach stick and a Shout stain stick, iron, unstick a zipper, etc., will save him or her time and headaches.
P.S. One of our better midshipman sponsor family sea stories: Mid threw cammies in wash after summer Leatherneck training. Clink clink clink -- a handful of spent rounds fell out of the pockets. Took paint chips off the white laundry drum interior. Couldn't figure out why we had orange stains on white laundry loads, finally figured out it was running rust. Had to replace washer, now have stainless steel drum. We now drill the mids on removing exploding ballpoint pens (dyed the interior of the dryer with baked-on blue splatters), ammo, plebe notes wadded in pockets, etc. We keep all coins...