Laundry & ironing service in Maassluis

Maassluis arose around 1340 at a sluice in the sea defence between the North Sea coast and Rotterdam — the Maeslantsluys, meant to provide protection against floods. The village received city rights only in 1614 and grew mainly through herring fishing. In the sixteenth century there was huge demand for salted herring in the Baltic region, and Maassluis positioned itself as a base: catching in the North Sea, gibbing in town, shipping to Germany, Poland and Scandinavia.

From the second half of the eighteenth century came a heavy decline. The number of fishing vessels fell, employment shrank and poverty became visible in the harbour. What remained was the Grote or Nieuwe Kerk from the seventeenth century — the photo above shows the church complex from the air. The church was one of the first in the Netherlands explicitly built as a Protestant building, with a Greek cross floor plan based on Amsterdam's Noorderkerk. It remained the city's reference point for generations, even when the fishery had already turned against the town.

The opening of the Nieuwe Waterweg in 1872 gave Maassluis a second life. Large sea-going ships now sailed between Rotterdam and the North Sea past the city — and needed help from tugboats. Within a few decades Maassluis became the heart of Dutch tugboat shipping. The National Towing Museum, housed since 1979 in the old town hall, is the only museum in the world devoted exclusively to tugboats.

Today Maassluis is a compact harbour city with its own character: rows of old facades along the harbour, new neighbourhoods on the polder side, and ships always on the Waterweg. We run set pickup days through Maassluis — Binnenstad, Sluispolder, Burgemeesterswijk. Your bag goes along in the morning, and comes back in the evening clean and ironed with the same driver. A kind of tugboat service for your household, without the rumble and steam.