Laundromat History
Where as in the developed Western World all of us now take the ability to do our washing in our own washing machine at home as a given fact, you do have to remember that not everyone has a washing machine, and that those on a limited budget will still use a Laundromat, where you can take your washing along to a coin operated machine to wash and dry your clothes.
Yet we should not forget in many poorer countries that even using a Laundromat would be a luxury for those people who still have to wash their clothes in local streams or rivers. Indeed this can be a dangerous process with several people a year killed Worldwide by crocodiles whilst washing their clothes in rivers.
So that brings me back to Laundromats. Once they were virtually on every street corner before mass made washing machines became low enough in price for just about every home to have one.
They actually date back over 50 years, with the first commercial laundry’s operating a “Take in, and wash service” to the public. Then this developed into a service whereby a washing machine could be rented by the hour or even by the day.
Then in the 50’s the Laundromat concept came into being with the addition of coin operated machines, meaning that the attendant was no longer needed on a daily basis, but only to open and close the shop and empty the machines of coins. Indeed many Laundromats in city centres were left open 24 hours a day.
However this in turn led to problems with vandalism and machines breaking down, and Laundromats went through a period of bad perception in the public’s eyes. This resulted in many Laundromats closing for all the wrong reasons.
However more savvy owners brought back attendants, and offered service washes, dry cleaning and duvet washing services. Growth continued slowly in the 70’s but expanded again in the 80’s with newer outlets being built with better facilities and more services such as ironing, folding and tailoring of garments.
Indeed such commercial laundry set ups expanded to offer other services such as shoe repairs, key cutting, photocopying, mailboxes and more recently Internet connections.
And whilst we may not see as many Laundromats in business today as we once did, they are still in widespread use in all over the World, with the USA running around 35,000, amounting to billions of dollars in revenue.