Seven Cities, Seven Gatherings, One Movement
This tour is created so Laundry Love Locations-teams, friends, guests-
can gather together, celebrate, connect, share stories, and conspire.

Cities & Dates

Los Angeles CA – November 9th, 2019
Portland OR – November 16th, 2019
Kansas City MO – April 17th, 2020
Bentonville AR – April 18th, 2020
Dallas TX – April 19th, 2020
Washington D.C – April 25th, 2020
New York NY – April 26th, 2020

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS (Fox 24) – A Northwest Arkansas organization is working to make sure all families have clean clothes.

Serve NWA is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Laundry Love initiative. The organization has offered laundry love to neighbors in need in its three locations every month for the past ten years.

Every month, the organization provides an evening free of laundry, a hot meal, friendship and guidance to resources and nonprofits in our community.

One of those events is being held on Friday (Jan. 4). The event will run from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at the Westwood Center Laundromat on North 13th Street in Rogers.

Watch the Video HERE

Program allows people to do laundry for free one day a month at Cedars Laundromat

WOODLAND — Valerie Guerra spent three days trying to get the key to use the laundry room at the Lewis River RV Park recently, and even if she was able to get it, she’d be doing laundry for six people on one machine.

For Guerra, laundry day has been one of the harder aspects of moving her family to the RV park back in October. It’s hard to get in the laundry room, and if she can’t, going to a laundromat can cost upwards of $50, a trip, even more if she’s doing bedding and towels.

For the last three months, Guerra and her family have had some help. A Woodland branch of the national Laundry Love program started in April. The program allows an organization or church to cover the cost of doing laundry. A Vancouver branch started in 2010, and reopened in January after a car crashed into the laundromat last year. There are also locations in Washougal and Longview.

“This saved us this month,” Guerra said at the Sept. 11 Laundry Love event in Woodland.

Read More Here

It’s 8:30 on a Wednesday night and Beach Coin Laundry in Huntington Beach is packed.

Thirty people crowd inside, busily folding T-shirts, socks, shorts and bed sheets, and transferring their garments in and out of the washers and dryers making sure no machine is left empty for a minute.

The laundromat has been taken over by Laundry Love Huntington Beach, a group of local volunteers who provide free laundry services to homeless and low-income families in the area, offering what may be their only way to get clean clothes for the month.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

http://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/tn-wknd-et-laundry-love-20170723-story.html

A great charity is all about finding something that is needed, and then taking concrete and proactive steps to address that need. Charity and laundry might not be two terms that you instantly associate with one another, but there are many charities built around laundry and the importance of clean laundry.

Around the world, people are judged by their level of cleanliness. People, such as the homeless, who usually lack consistent access to bathroom and laundry facilities are often face tremendous difficulties with issues such as hygiene. Many charities have been created to address these needs, and the results have been impressive. In this article, we are going to explore a few of the most successful laundry related charities. As you’ll see, inspired people across the globe have taken steps to help the homeless and those in need of clothing. It truly is an amazing thing.

The Story of Laundry Love

Portland, Oregon based Laundry Love has garnered considerable addition over the years. The idea behind Laundry Love is a simple but very powerful one. The people at laundry love team up with local laundromats to offer free laundry services. The idea behind Laundry Love is that the homeless are treated better when they have clean clothing. There is little denying the logic of this point.

On Laundry Love’s website is a prominently featured and powerful quote from a homeless person, “If I had clean clothes, people would treat me as a human being.” These words were said by a homeless person in Ventura, California to the founder of Laundry Love in 2002. What began as a simple conversation lead to a world changing charity idea.

Since its creation in 2002, Laundry Love has been wildly successful. Currently there are over 30,000 Laundry Love laundromats spread out across the country. These laundromats are providing services to poor people in need on a daily basis. It is estimated that Laundry Love has helped the homeless and immigrants with over a million loads of laundry. In that time, Laundry Love has helped over 750,000 people with their laundry.

Laundry Love partners with laundromats to provide assistants to those not just living on the streets, but also those living in their cars, shelters, motels and other locations. While the idea is simple, there is no denying its power and potential. Laundry Love has received considerable national attention, including coverage on such high-profile news programs as NBC’s Today.

Australia’s Orange Sky Laundry

Half a world away in Australia, another laundry charity has been making waves of its own. Orange Sky Laundry. Founded in 2014, Orange Sky Laundry began with the idea of bringing washing machines directly to the homeless. Spearheaded by Lucas Patchett and Nicholsa Marchesi in Brisbane, it all began with an old van, a generation and two washing machines. The end result was Australia’s first mobile laundry specific for the homeless.

Today, Orange Sky Laundry has expanded considerably. Now, there are services operating in 11 locations including Canberra, Gold Coast, Perth, Melbourne, Wollongong, Hobart, Adelaide and others. Each week Orange Sky Laundry cleans an impressive 6.9 tons of laundry.

Helping the homeless get clean clothing is only one aspect of what Orange Sky Laundry does to help the homeless. Orange Sky Laundry is also partnering with local food vans so that the homeless can also get a meal when they are waiting for their clothes to finish being cleaned. Additionally, Orange Sky Laundry is looking out for human health and the environment as their laundry detergents are free of toxic compounds.

This charity takes donations to keep its operation running. Over the years, Orange Sky Laundry has received a good deal of attention both in Australia and around the world.

Donate Appliances and Clothing Nationwide with Donation Town

Another approach to helping those in need get clean clothing comes from Donation Town. Through Donation Town, it is possible to donate a wide range of appliances including washers and dryers. Any machine that is functional and not missing parts can be donated through Donation Town.

For those in need, a free washer and dryer can be a life changing addition. Donation Town also picks up appliances at your home or place of business.

This really is a charity that makes a ton of sense, as most people have no idea what to do with their old washing machine and dryer when they upgrade to new appliances.

Donation Town also takes clothing donations as well. Over the years, Donation Town has been featured in publications ranging from Forbes and the Washington Post to Mother Nature Network, FamilyCircle and many more. They have a nationwide directory of participating charities so working with Donation Town is as simple as logging into the site, locating a charity in your area and then scheduling a free donation pick up. Learn more about Donation Town by clicking here.

Laundry Charities are Helping Improve the Quality of Life for the Homeless

Laundry charities help underscore that there are many, diverse ways to help the homeless and others in need. Laundry charities, such as Orange Sky Laundry, also highlight how a seemingly simple and small idea, such as laundry vans for the homeless, can blossom and play an important role in our communities.

The problem of homelessness is one that isn’t likely to go away any time soon, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take steps to help make life for the homeless better. Luckily, there are many established charities working hard to help the homeless achieve a better quality of life and the respect that they deserve. In the coming years, we can expect to see many other similar charities pop up around the globe.

Consider getting involved or donating to one of these excellent charities. Having clean laundry is something so many of us take for granted. However, when it comes to homeless people, having clean clothes is a luxury that many simply cannot afford.

At a new laundromat in the center of Rome, no one needs quarters. The Pope Francis Laundry–opened by the Pope himself–is a place where homeless people and others struggling with extreme poverty can wash and dry a load of laundry for free.

The laundry is meant to “restore dignity to so many people who are our brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Konrad Krajewski said in a press release from the Vatican. “One of the greatest difficulties for those who live on the streets, along with that of finding food, a place to spend the night and public baths, is to wash and dry the clothes they wear, in many cases the only ones they own.”

Inside a former hospital near the Vatican, run by the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio, the facility has six washers and six dryers donated by Whirpool, and a free supply of detergent from Procter & Gamble. A barbershop, showers, and health care facilities will be added on-site later.

It might be the first laundromat opened by a pope, but it isn’t Pope Francis’s first effort to help the homeless. In 2014, for his 78th birthday, the pope handed out 400 sleeping bags, each emblazoned with the Vatican’s coat of arms, to homeless people in Rome. In 2015, he turned a space next to St. Peter’s Square into showers for the homeless and a barbershop that offers free haircuts and shaves on Mondays, and arranged for a homeless man to be buried in the Vatican. In 2016, at the canonization of Mother Teresa, the pope invited 1,500 homeless people to have seats of honor (and free pizza) at a luncheon.The new laundry is one of a handful of projects that try to address the challenge of clean clothes for homeless people. In the U.S., volunteers from an organization called Laundry Love partner with local laundromats to offer free services at certain hours to people in need. The project started after founders asked a homeless man what he needed, and he said, “If I had clean clothes I think people would treat me like a human being.”

During a Laundry Love session, which typically lasts two to five hours, volunteers either pay for someone’s laundry or, in some cases, the laundromat offers the free use of a machine or two.

Other laundromats donate the proceeds from particular machines to the nonprofit. While people wash and dry their clothes, volunteers get to know them, and also often offer services such as tutoring for children or assistance with a job search.

“Dignity is built,” Laundry Love co-founder and national director Greg Russinger tells Fast Company. “Relationships are built…all you have is free time inside a laundromat.” (One of the organization’s supporters,  Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce, says she shared the idea with Pope Francis, which may have been part of the inspiration for the new Roman laundry).

In Australia, a nonprofit called Orange Sky Laundry engineered a washer and dryer that can fit in the back of a van. Volunteers drive the vans–now a fleet of 11–on streets in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and other Australian cities, offering homeless people free loads of laundry.

Still, it’s a basic necessity that many people struggle to afford–and may be even more difficult to access for people who are on the verge of homelessness or not yet connected with other homeless services. In the 14 years that Laundry Love has operated, it has seen clear evidence of the need: to date, the program has helped nearly 750,000 people do a million loads of laundry.

“We have a large constituency of people who are going through the wringer,” says Russinger. “They’ve lost jobs, they’ve lost houses, they’re in their cars or low-income hotels, nobody knows about [their homelessness] because if they shared about that, they could lose whatever job they might have. There’s a large constituency of people . . . that most people don’t see and think about. That’s who we see.”

Pope Francis’s new laundry might inspire others to also help. “I just appreciate the fact that he’s jumping on and recognizes that clean clothes matter to people, whoever they are, wherever they come from,” Russinger says. “I think it matters.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/40405831/the-pope-opened-a-free-laundromat-for-the-homeless-in-rome