The word “laundry” is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as: “the dirty clothes and sheets that need to be, are being, or have been washed” Or, also as “a room in a house where clothes, bed sheets, etc., are washed, or a business that washes clothes, bed sheets, etc., for customers.” Between these two meanings, there’s a whole world of dirty history worth cleaning up, and it’s actually sort of fascinating.
The Very Old Etymology of a Simple Word
First, to answer the basic question that this article starts with, the word laundry is English, but only sort of. It’s a modern derivative of the 16th century Middle English word for the same thing, which was lavendry. It’s origin however goes way back further to Latin, which in early medieval and even older Roman times referred to laundry loads and the act of cleaning them as lavare, and to a place where laundry is done as a lavanderium.
From here this little set of words evolved to give us the old French word lavanderie, which is itself a name for a place where people who washed laundry -unsurprisingly called lavandiers- would work. English took its version from the French by the way.
This word evolution also happens to be why in many romance languages today, the similarities still hold firm. Thus you get the still current above-mentioned French words for laundry and laundering places, or for example the modern Spanish word for laundry (as in place), which is lavanderia, and lavado, for a literal pile of laundered cloth.
Now, for a bit of historical perspective, because believe us, if you think modern laundry duty can be tedious, it doesn’t hold a drop of water to how things used to be done, and smell in the world of the past..
Laundry: Then vs. Now
One of the oldest human activities is doing laundry. Everyone from teenagers, to college students to young professionals to homemakers today have to go through the periodic irritation of doing their own washing and drying, or hauling a load off to someone else who professionally (and more thoroughly) can do it for them.
It might however give you a bit of satisfaction to at least know that that people have been getting annoyed by these chores since the dawn of civilization, and passing them off to professional washing services of one kind or another since just about the same amount of time.
Truly, no matter how much of your own washing you do or how heavy the loads you keep sending off to a professional laundry service, take a bit of joy in remembering that at least modern laundry duty is mostly about clean water, usually nonlethal working conditions and a whole range of cleaning and disinfecting products that smell wonderful. The past by contrast was full of urine, wild and dangerous aquatic animals, and the random dangers of hypothermia, heat stroke and unplanned drowning.
Why all these fun things? Because for thousands of years, and even today in many less developed parts of the world, they’re still a major part of what doing laundry is all about, at least for whoever gets the task dumped on them.
For starters, keep in mind that for almost all of pre-modern history and for any non-developed modern contexts, laundry duty usually meant slogging through chilly river water, sometimes braving wild animals that could include water buffalo, crocodiles, hippos, water snakes and a whole stinging menu of insects with a terrible love for drawing pain from human feet.
Then of course, in the midst of all these dangers, there are the hours of back breaking work, sun burn, possible frost bite and no shortage of other nasty weather conditions just to get your clothing back to smelling more or less passable.
Things didn’t get much better when it came to cleaning materials either. Store-bought soaps and fabric softeners? Forget about it. Rendering your own animal or plant fats, mixing them with caustic lye and maybe adding a bit of ash from wood you’d have to burn yourself were all the order of the day. Then we could also talk about all the pee.
That's right, millennia of human urine used by generations of professional fabric launderers for some particularly ripe-smelling feet-in-the-yellow stain removal. Needless to say, this smell could get quite concentrated in any place where clothes were regularly washed.
These are the kinds of things that even something so seemingly simple as laundry used to be all about: Whether you had to break a sweat doing it yourself or hired out the service, somebody was going to suffer more than a few hazards to life, limb and nose.
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Wash and fold service handles every step in the laundry process, offering a comprehensive solution. This service involves professionals managing everything from washing to folding and even delivering your washed clean clothes back to you.
Dry cleaning is crucial for maintaining the quality and longevity of delicate fabrics. This professional cleaning service includes pressing and delivering clothes on hangers, ensuring they arrive in pristine condition.
Pickup and delivery service offers unmatched convenience. Scheduling laundry pickups is easy with services like Hamperapp, offering personless free pickup and delivery. This makes scheduling laundry services around your availability easier and avoids the need to drop off laundry.
