Rule 2: Time is of the essence.

"I came down three minutes late once and someone had taken it out," Adamson says.

The signs on most laundry room walls say that a wash cycle takes 34 minutes. They do not mean 35. Students say that if they fail to come downstairs to remove their laundry, someone else will do it for them.

"They'll sit around for 10 minutes or so going 'uhhh, I don't know what to do,' and then they'll take it out anyways," Brian Black '97 said Wednesday as he folded clothes in the basement of Weld Hall.

But if there is a laundry room honor code, it only holds for a limited period of time.

"I feel guilty for a little while, but then I think, I got there on time, so why didn't you get there on time?" says Jim Monroe '86, a Yard proctor who does his laundry in Weld.

Rule 3: Come prepared. Stain Stick is only the beginning. To kill the 34 minutes (or 56 for a dryer) in a socially acceptable manner, students carry everything from romance novels to Rousseau.

"I would have to do the reading anyways," says Craig A. Lancaster '97, who brought along a copy of "History of the Modern World" to his laundry date in Weld.

Rule 4: Avoid rush-hour.

Weekday afternoons and late nights are reputedly uncrowded, veteran launderers say. Instead, most people do their laundry on weekends, a sad commentary on Harvard's social life.

"It's that no-party-in-the-Yard thing," Monroe says.

Rule 5: To forestall becoming a casualty of the laundry wars, avoid washing clothes on campus.

There really is no other way to assure the safety of your garments. Funds permitting, try the off-campus option.

There is another choice, however, used by the brave, the hardy and perhaps the stinky.

"I just don't wash my clothes much any more," Kuchner says.