Laundry & ironing service in Gouda

Gouda received city rights from Count Floris V in 1272 and grew, in the late Middle Ages, into one of Holland's busiest trading places. The town lay at the junction of waterways — Hollandse IJssel, Gouwe, the canal to Amsterdam — and offered an attractive combination of crafts. The print above, a Rijksmuseum etching, shows Gouda from the bank of the Gouwe near the IJssel: the city skyline with the Sint-Janstoren that still defines it.

Textiles were big in those centuries, but Gouda became famous mostly for three other products: cheese, pipes and pottery. As early as 1395 the city government issued detailed market rules; by the early fifteenth century a cheese market was running. The Waag on the Markt was rebuilt in 1668 to a design by Pieter Post — originally for weighing all goods, gradually only cheese. The cheese market still draws tourists from around the world today.

The Gouda pipe-making industry began in the seventeenth century. In 1665 the pipe-makers' guild had 180 members, and a year later the first pipe market was held. Then it took off: in 1749 Gouda counted 349 pipe factories, and half the population worked in the trade. The white clay pipes were shipped throughout Europe and to the colonies. The pipe industry vanished in the nineteenth century, the cheese market remained — and today Gouda is mainly a mid-sized city with a lively medieval centre, high visitor numbers and a hard-working population.

Living in Gouda means knowing the bustle of the Markt, the calm of the surrounding polders, and the relentless schedule in between. We drive set pickup days through the municipality — Binnenstad, Bloemendaal, Goverwelle, Plaswijck. Your bag goes along in the morning and comes back in the evening, clean and ironed with the same driver. That's how Wastas works in Gouda — handy, practical, the same rhythm every week. Just as the Gouda Waag weighed its cheeses on a fixed pattern for centuries.