Stranger's Kind Gesture for a Student Struggling With Laundry Due to Anxiety Will Move You

Anxiety can have a crippling effect on people, leaving them in a state where they even struggle to finish everyday tasks. Going out in crowded public spaces, talking to strangers, or trying to sort through piled-up pending work, seems overwhelming for individuals affected by it. So it's natural for one to have meltdowns while looking at their pile of dirty laundry.

u/miichaelscotch took to the Reddit community to share how they found themselves in such a stressful situation and how a stranger stepped in to extend a helping hand. They shared a single picture of a neatly folded pile of laundry and wrote, "A stranger paid for, dried and folded my laundry when I, was completely overwhelmed with stress and anxiety from school. I accidentally fell asleep." The incident took place in 2016 when the Reddit user was in the last year of their university.

"I was in my last year of university when I decided in my last semester that I would pick up another degree. I was taking 21 hours of classes, and most of them were intense and difficult. I seem to remember having meltdowns weekly, if not daily, and wondering how the hell am I going to finish this all," the Reddit user explained. "One of these days, I started a small load of laundry in my apartment complex washroom. We only had one washer and one dryer. So if you were one minute late to take your clothes out, you would come back to find them on top of the machine in a soaking pile."

The person lived with 20 tenants in the building so getting the laundry done was more of a race to them. On one occasion, the exhausted university student stuck their laundry in the washing machine and decided to wait for it to get done while sitting in their apartment. "I sat down in my apartment to catch up on some project and was so worn out that I fell asleep for hours, leaving my laundry in the washing machine. I was fully expecting to find my laundry in a soppy heap as I way overstayed my welcome," the person wrote.

But they came back to find their laundry dried and folded in a neat pile atop the dryer by a kind neighbor who decided to put in an extra $1.25 to do the student's laundry. "No one would have faulted them for leaving the laundry atop the machine, but instead they took the time to go above and beyond. As I said, I've never forgotten this. 8 years later. I never found out who it was, but it made me like all of my neighbors a little bit more," the post concluded.

Reacting to this act of kindness, u/beautifulcindy1 commented: "What a kind act! It's really admirable that someone took the time and effort to help you with your laundry when you were so overwhelmed." u/copamarigold shared: "I did this once too! The guy caught me as I was putting my laundry in his dryer an hour later at my sister’s condo where we were staying. I was so afraid he would be upset but he was so amazed that there are still good people in this world which made me really happy to be one. He made me teach him how to fold his towels nicely too like I did. Yay on you for remembering this and pay it forward every chance you get."

u/Sunny_Sammie_518 remarked: "What a nice stranger! I’m so glad you got that little bit of help when you were struggling a bit. Helps put things into perspective." u/Kevinator201 added: "Something similar happened to me in college. I was having breakdowns weekly from stressing myself out so much thinking my career depended on my grades. I was also running out of money and didn’t know how I would afford the $50 of paper for a final project. I was at a paper warehouse looking for specific paper and they had an old stack that they gave me for free. I got back to my car and just sobbed and sobbed at the kindness."