Article: The Decline of the American Laundromat

[launderess]

"What are (or were, as it were) "family wash" commercial laundries? "

In the old days many laundries offered various levels of service. Prices increased as you went up the ladder.....

Lowest was "family" or "wet" wash (different places used various terms, where laundry was machine washed and extracted, then either returned wet/damp (for ironing at home), or dried, folded and returned.

Wet wash or family wash appealed to housewives because it took much of the labor (those three days of soaking, washing, beating, scrubbing, wringing, etc...) along with the related damp and smells away. Family wash was usually cheaper because it didn't involve any ironing..

Moving up the ladder you had machine washed and ironed laundry, machine washed, machine ironed and touched up by hand, machine washed and hand ironed, washed and ironed by hand totally.

Today and for the past fifty years or so family wash usually means simply "wash and fold".

 

[panthera]

On the few occasions when I must go to a laundramat,

I figure out another solution. A manual carwash which is unattended so I can stretch out the item too big for one of our machines and clean it.

I would have to be homeless and desperate to use any of the filthy pigsties around our town. Not to mention the insane, criminals, druggies and generally horrid people who hang out at them.

This is why they're declining, pure and simple. They're scary, filthy and risky.

 

On a cheerier note - please do check out my post on this in Dirty Laundry.