Laundry Management Process

Laundry Management
by Lau Kooi Lim

What is laundry?

~ refers to washing of clothes or other textiles

What is linen?

~refers to clothes used in house such as tablecloths, pillow case, curtains and others.

So, let’s begin!! (^-^)

               

We are now using lots of linen in our daily life, and of course, hotel are not excluded. Thousands or tons of linen they were using and linen is not a temporary but long-term item to be used.

                All guest rooms or even staff uniforms need to accumulate in large amount. In this case, housekeeping staff need to launder the linen and make it always be available. So, all staff can get their well-laundered uniform and provide good quality linen to guests.

                It is very important to keep linen in good quality so steps to maintain them has to be alert. Small hotel will usually wash or handle their linen with commercial laundry service outside the hotel. While large hotel will have their own laundry premises. They will have washers, dryers, ironer and folder in their laundry room.

 

Washer

Dryer

Ironer

Folder

Stages that need to be followed in the laundry cycle:

   Collecting dirty laundry :

 Collect all dirty linen from guests rooms, guest bathrooms,  and dining area. Then put them separately.

·  Sorting dirty laundry :

Segregate the linen carefully according to type of fabric, domain of item use, degree of soiling, and type of soiling. Separate the staff uniforms, guest room and bathroom linen, dining area linen, butchery aprons, and guests’ personal clothes.

·  Pre-treating the stain:

Remove the stains using stain cleaning chemicals. Staff can use detergents and cleaning chemicals at the time of washing, to save the time and efforts.

· Washing:

The housekeeping staffs need to handle many washers and dryers depending on the size of hotel and occupancy of rooms. Set the automatic washers to different wash cycles depending upon the type of linen. Remove as much as possible water content from the linen by using extractors. The linen are then starched to make it little stiff and shiny.

· Drying:

Put the linen into dryers for removing any moisture still left.

·  Repair if require and ironing:

Separate the worn out linen to be given to the tailor. Pass linens  such as towels, bed linen and others to the ironer. Hand-iron a few linen such as uniforms.

·  Folding staking:

Automatic folding and stacking machines come to the aid of housekeeping staff to save them from the large effort of folding and stacking the linen accurately. Some sort of linen such as staff uniforms and guest personal clothes still need manual efforts for folding.

· Delivering clothes in rooms:

Transport the ready laundered linen to the uniform room and linen room. Send the linen that need repair to the tailor room.

So these are the detail for the laundry cycle.

In conclusion, laundry management is quite important in a hotel to ensure that all linens are clean and tidy, and ready to be use. Managing laundry may be difficult but it’s gonna be easy as ABC if all housekeeping staff take effort and do it as a team.  

"Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success."