Laundry hotel. A man lays out a white towel.

Is your care home struggling with endless piles of laundry and outdated processes? Perhaps it’s time for a fresh approach.

WASHCO’s care expert, Amanda Symmons, shares with you her top tips to help you improve efficiency in your laundry.

1. Review your capacity
Ensure that you’re using the right machines, as the capacity of these will directly affect the volume of laundry you can manage.

The general rule (if laundry is operating eight hours per day, seven days a week) is that a care home will need 0.5 kilos of capacity per resident, however this will vary dependent on the type of home. A nursing or dementia home may have more laundry per resident, whereas residential homes may have a lower requirement.

2. Adjust your temperatures
Try switching to a 40-degree wash (with the appropriate chemical) with standard laundry, which should help save approximately 20 minutes per cycle. On the basis of a 12.5-hour working day, this works out to be 250 minutes or over four hours.

Only red-bag laundry (foul and infected in a red dissolvable bag) needs to be processed at 65 degrees in order to achieve thermal disinfection, according to current HTM01-04 guidelines.

3. Sort laundry at source
Establishing a sorting practice at the source, such as within the resident’s room, is an excellent strategy to ensure a smooth and efficient laundry process. By categorising laundry items into distinct groups like bedding, towels, clothing, and red-bag soiled and infected items, your team can easily select the appropriate programs in the laundry room, guaranteeing proper cleaning and safe disinfection of the linens.

4. Review the layout of your laundry facility
To ensure optimal performance of your laundry facility, it’s crucial to have a well-designed room. The layout should be carefully planned, enabling easy access to machines and effortless transportation of laundry.

Ideally, there should be a clear separation between clean and dirty linen areas. If feasible, it’s recommended to have separate entry and exit points for dirty linen. Approximately, one third of the room should be reserved for dirty laundry and two thirds of the room for clean.