Laundry for the Domestically Impaired
- Posted by Peter on July 9th, 2007 filed in Homes and housing, Retail, Services
A few months ago my colleagues wrote about the potential opportunity in self serve laundramats (see what Alex wrote and Steve’s response) complete with wireless access and bar service. Indeed, in my month in Bucharest I’ve noticed a dearth of dry cleaners and laudramats. It appears standard to either (1) launder one’s clothes in a small washing machine in the kitchen, that holds about four articles of clothing, and then adorn the apartment with drying clothes, or perhaps (2) ship one’s laundry off to a charitable relative. In addition to self serve laundramats there is a need for a higher tier of service that can same time for customers.
As a former resident of New York City and someone who could be categorized as “Domestically Impaired,” I’ve become accustomed to outsourcing the entire range of domestic chores. Bucharest and its many hard working professionals could benefit from a network of kiosks where people can drop off and pick up their laundry on their way to and from work. Such one stop shop kiosks would take your dry cleaning and your regular wash and return it to you clean, dry and folded. Customers could be charged by the article (time consuming but necessary for dry cleaning) or by the kilo (more practical for regular laundry). To reduce rental expense the drop off / pick up kiosks could be compact in size with laundry transferred by van to a centralized facility for dry cleaning and washing.
Such a service would make Bucharest more hospitable to the domestically impaired, free up time for work and leisure and vastly improve interior decoration. Meanwhile, I have to suffer the anxiety of planning which shirts to wash tonight and which room will look best with a row of drying socks.
Written by Peter
July 13th, 2007 at 10:53 am
There are some places in Bucharest,where you can leave your clothes for washing - the disadvantages are that they do not give them back to you in the same day and they are expensive - they are charging for every article of dirty clothing ( I am not sure if they are charging every sock or they charge by pair
July 16th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
In addition to the additional expense of being charged for every item, you have to waste time counting your articles of dirty laundry or watching the store clerk count them (it’s no fun standing around watching someone rifle through your dirty laundry) or just trust that they will count them correctly on their own. It would be much quicker to just put it in a bag and weigh it.