Laundry & ironing service in Rotterdam

Nineteenth-century Rotterdam was a city of harbour, hard work and new building. Ships were launched, factories rose up, and a whole generation of working-class families filled the harbour districts. There was no room in that rhythm for a quiet laundry day at home. The steam laundry made its entrance: a large, industrial operation aimed at hotels, hospital linen and uniforms. From 1910, Wasserij Piet Hein stood in Delfshaven, housed in a former gin distillery on the harbour — and ran until 1984.

Delfshaven itself is the oldest part of the city. It was created in 1389 when Delft had a channel dug to the Maas — the Delfshavense Schie — to export its beer and textiles directly. It was thus the harbour of Delft, not of Rotterdam, and the structure of the old core still betrays that: narrow canals, warehouses, small boats against the quay. The print above, a Rijksmuseum etching from 1912, shows Delfshaven from the water — the kind of view that boatmen had for generations.

Around those harbours, related businesses thrived: soap factories, vinegar factories, shipyards, gin distilleries, malt mills, smithies. And so laundries too. Rotterdam households rarely had gardens or space for bleaching laundry; renting out laundry services suited this densely built city. After the war the household washing machine took over from many industrial laundries, but the desire to have someone else do your wash remained.

Today Rotterdam is a working city in the extreme — harbours, offices, hospitality, creatives, students, families all alternating in close rhythm. We drive set pickup days through the city: Kralingen, Hillegersberg, Blijdorp, Cool, Delfshaven. Your laundry bag hangs out in the morning, and comes back in the evening clean, ironed and folded with the same driver. That's how Wastas works in Rotterdam — at the pace of a city that never really stops.