Wash N Fold

Wash and fold (WNF), also known as "Fluff and Fold"; is a time saving laundry service that involves washing, drying, and folding customer clothes. The customer will drop off the laundry, and then the service washes, drys, and folds it. This service is especially useful for washing larger items that will not fit in a home washer setup. Blankets, quilts, dog beds, rugs, etc. are a common customer request. Additionally, some WNF operations offer pick-up and delivery from a home or business.

What’s Very Common Questions?

Do i need a laundromat to start WNF?

Many people have started WNF services in their garage with a few household washing machines and dryers. This is possible. However, it does not scale well and you will quickly learn two facts... one, residential washing machines were not made to handle commercial loads and will quickly fail; and two the setup with folding tables or other garage tables for drying and folding is not efficient. A home garage will work for initially starting; but will not scale and will only work for a "side hussle" type of operation. There are some considerations you need to address when starting up a WNF. Who is the customer going to be and what is your process going to be? Many people quickly learn that a Laundromat will allow them to scale - frequently, renting a laundromat after it closes for the day is an efficient way to scale the WNF process. However, this requires finding helpers willing to work overnight hours (as well as finding a laundromat you can rent for the after hours work).

You are going to need to determine if you are looking for commercial customers (primarily sheets and towels), a residential customer (primarily clothes but also towels, blankets and bed linens) or both

Your marketing and approach for each will be somewhat different - Commercial will require door to door marketing and dropping off literature, residential will require social media advertising and if you are looking for both you will need to do some combination of the above. You will also need to develop a computer process to input, track, return and charge for the laundry. There will also be necessary supplies you will need to source, purchase and utilize for the WNF process. You will also want to carry insurance for both your laundry process, pickup/delivery process and employees.

What type of License do I need?

A License is controlled at the state level... permits depend usually on town/city regulations... so, depends on where you live - or more specifically where you want to place the laundromat.

How much should I charge?

When starting out, you need to determine your pricing strategy. You should calculate your costs to wash 10 lbs of laundry. Most WNF services base the pricing by the pound and set a minimum of 10 lbs for a customer load of laundry. Most also have a set per piece for larger items like comforters, blankets, dog beds, rugs, etc. Some people charge by the pound and have customers pre-pay for services... others allow the customer to pay when they pick up the laundry.

How do you handle the employee starting the machines for WNF?

The easiest solution is to set up a card system in the Laundromat. This is by far the easiest. However, without a card system will require some constant accounting and monitoring of quarters to ensure they don't go missing.

Older Virtues

This section lists the other features of Blue Haze which are also present in Purple Haze.

Standards compliant

Blue Haze is 100% compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2 for more consistent browser rendering.

Layout without tables

No tables were harmed during the making of this design.

Browser-specific styles without JavaScript™

Styles which are perculiar to a specific web browser paradigm are encoded in the stylesheet itself.

Final Notes

I hope you find Blue Haze of some use to you in your web design needs. If you use Blue Haze or derive inspiration from it, please let me know so that I may see your site and share in your design ideas. That is, after all, the basic philosophy of OSWD!

XHTML and CSS offer a plethora of features in web design which you'd be crazy not to take advantage of. Do your site a favor: use standards-compliant markup. The Web will love you for it! :-)