Laundry & ironing service in The Hague

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the edge of The Hague between the Nieuwe Haven and the Ammunitiehaven, stood a row of bleacheries with names like Het Lammetje Groen, Het Kalfje Groen and De Witte Swaen. Linen was scrubbed there by hand in tubs, boiled with soap and ash, and then spread on the grass to whiten in sun and rain. That is why the street that now runs there is still called Bleekveld.

The bleacheries were not there by chance. Washing needs water, bleaching needs a grass field, sun and time — and all three came together in this neighbourhood. Unskilled women from The Hague and the surrounding region worked long days here, handling the linen of the well-to-do families along the Hofvijver and at the country estates around the city. A bundle of bedding could take a whole week of rinsing, beating, drying and ironing. The practice, like the laundry itself, was part of how The Hague looked back then — a residential city that outsourced its domestic side to whoever had the time and muscle.

What once applied to the wealthy now applies to almost all of working The Hague: a full laundry basket fills up in a week, and it doesn't fit between meetings, dinner and hanging out the wash. The bleacheries are gone, the need is not. We drive set morning routes through the city — Bezuidenhout, Scheveningen, Benoordenhout, Escamp — and pick up your laundry bag exactly where you left it.

You get it back clean, ironed and neatly folded, with the same driver as last time. No bags to carry, no appointments to schedule, no full drying racks in the living room. That's how Wastas works in The Hague — with modern machines and fair rates, and with the care that has been part of laundry here ever since the Golden Age.