How Does Online Laundry Work?
Most household chores can be tedious, but laundry, especially if you have a large family or young children, can seem like a never-ending task. Even while you’re on holiday or travelling for work, you’ve got dirty clothes that need washing each day, and you don’t always have a place to wash them easily in your hotel, B&B or hostel. Queue the rise of online laundry services!
Thankfully, there are laundry apps that you can download or use online, so someone else can do your washing for you, without you having to worry about a thing. So how does online laundry work and what are laundry apps?
What Are Laundry Apps?
Laundry apps are applications that you can download on your phone to schedule someone to collect your dirty laundry, wash it for you and deliver it back to your location, clean, dry and folded. Most laundry applications also have online sites that you can use on your computer instead of your phone, but they work in exactly the same way.
If your washing machine is broken, you’re away from home and don’t have access to a washing machine, or simply don’t have the time or inclination to do regular loads of washing, then online laundry services are a great option to help you get your much needed clean clothing.
How Do Laundry Apps Work?
Once you’ve downloaded the laundry app from your app store, or gone to the website of your chosen online laundry service, you can create an account and schedule your laundry for collection straight away. You may have to weigh your washing to see how much you’ll need to pay, or if it’s just a couple of items, select what clothing or bedding items you have that need to be taken for washing.
A van will arrive to pick up your washing at your desired time and place (with some laundry services, they’ll pick them up within 60 minutes after you schedule your laundry pick-up), and take your items away to be washed. They’ll be washed, mixed colours or separated as you desire when you make your choice online, dried, folded and returned to your door within 24 hours or when you wish to have them returned.
How Much Do Online Laundry Services Cost?
If you choose to have a regular laundry service, you can prepay for several loads of washing within a specified time frame to reduce the cost of each load of laundry. For example, at Love2Laundry you can pay:
- £93.96 for 6 loads of washing within 3 months
- £148.50 for 10 loads of washing within 6 months
- £277.01 for 20 loads of washing within 12 months
If it’s just a one-off, you can simply pay for the weight of your loads of washing which is usually worked out per kilo, or you can specify which clothing items need washing, and they will be priced accordingly. A duvet will be a lengthier cleaning process than a shirt and will therefore cost more, for example.
Why a Laundry Service is Better Than Doing it Yourself
If you’re used to doing your washing at home, you may not see the benefits of using a laundry service to get your washing done for you. But in some cases, it’s much better to pay for an online laundry service to do your laundry for you, mostly because it:
- Saves you time
- Is convenient to get your clothes clean when you’re travelling
- Can cut back on costs
As a relatively modern concept, it’s natural to have doubts about whether it’s worth it to have someone else wash your laundry, so let’s look at each benefit in more detail.
Saves Times
Doing your laundry can take a great deal of time, especially when you consider separating the colours, waiting for the wash to finish, putting it in the tumble dryer and waiting again or hanging it on the washing line and bringing it all in later, before ironing, folding and putting away. With the increasing rush of modern life, ironing itself has fallen out of fashion with 30% of people aged 18 to 34 having never ironed their clothes, showing a clear attempt from young people to avoid spending time doing boring and time-consuming chores.
However, according to one study, even just the process of dealing with the laundry, before considering ironing and folding, takes an average of 64 minutes per week – that’s over 2 whole days a year just spent on cleaning our clothes!
To save yourself some time, it’s tempting to just stick your clothes in the wash for the 30-minute cycle, however, this doesn’t effectively clean your clothes and is only there as a refresher for your clothes and not a full wash. A standard wash should take around an hour, although if you’re washing your clothes on an eco-friendly setting at a lower temperature or washing wool, it’s not unusual for a wash to last up to three hours.
But whichever way you look at it, doing your own laundry can take up a lot of your time. So if you’re busy at work, looking after your family, or simply value your free time, employing an online laundry service will save you a huge amount of time, as you can schedule the collection with just a few taps of your screen.
Convenient When Travelling
There’s nothing more annoying than being on the road, whether it’s for a holiday or a business trip and spilling food down the one smart outfit you brought with you for each meeting or evening out.
Some hotels have their own laundry service, but it’s increasingly rare, and you can’t guarantee that your clothing will be washed according to its specific care instructions or that you’ll get it back in time for your event. Some holiday lets don’t have washing machines at all, so if you’ve got more than a week away, you’re sure to want to get some washing done at some point.
Well rather than heading down to waste a few important hours sitting in a laundrette while your suit washes and dries, save yourself the hassle by using a laundry app to collect your dirty clothes and have them returned to you in pristine condition in under 24 hours.
Cost-Effective
Of course, washing your clothes yourself at home is the cheapest option financially. However, your time is valuable. While you’re doing your washing, you’re missing out on other, more important things in life, whether it’s working, spending time with your family, or practising self-care, which are priceless.
What’s more, if you’re away from home and don’t have any nearby option to wash your clothing other than a laundrette or your hotel laundry service, using a laundry app is going to be a lot cheaper and easier.
A load of washing at a laundrette can cost from £10 to £20, roughly the same price as an online service, but you also have the inconvenience of taking all your clothing there yourself, when you could have them collected for you and returned to your door by an online laundry service. Hotels that still have laundry services can be very expensive for just a few items of clothing and they may not be given the necessary care. Laundry apps are usually cheaper, especially in London where prices are higher than in the rest of the UK, so getting a laundry app will save you time and worries rather than using hotel services.
Love2Laundry – an Online Laundry Service
Love2Laundry is one of the UK’s most popular online laundry services and apps, with thousands of glowing reviews from our customers on Trustpilot. We provide affordable laundry collection and returns for all kinds of laundry needs all over the UK, so choose from simple washing and drying to ironing and folding, or bedding and suits when you download the app, and save yourself some time doing the chores you can’t stand.
