Kasteel Duivenvoorde, just outside the centre of Voorschoten, has stood since 1226. And here's the unusual part: in all those centuries it has never been sold. The castle has stayed in the family by inheritance — eight centuries of inhabited history, the traces of which you can still see every day. The etching above, by Cornelis Elandts from the late seventeenth century, shows the castle with its gardens from a bird's-eye view.
The influential noble Van Wassenaer family lived at Duivenvoorde from the Middle Ages. The castle was not just a home — it was a working community, where stable staff, gardeners, cook, linen room and laundry ran in step. Every sheet, blanket and tablecloth was washed, dried, ironed and stored there; always to a fixed routine, always by the same experienced hands. Voorschoten also had smaller country estates along the Vliet, each with its own household.
Through the centuries Voorschoten remained a village with character: not large, not loud, but well located — between Leiden and The Hague, along the railway, with woods and meadows within walking distance. The difference from then is mainly that the country-estate households have given way to family households. But the laundry has not become less; it is just spread across more houses.
Today we run set pickup days through Voorschoten — through Noord-Hofland, Adegeest, the old village and the neighbourhoods around the Leidseweg. Your bag is ready in the morning, your driver takes it, and in the evening it hangs back on your door, clean and ironed. Same driver, week after week. We don't wash with the routine of a seventeenth-century linen room, but with as much attention to what happens to your things.
How Wastas works in Voorschoten
On the set pickup day our driver is at your door. Clean laundry comes back by appointment — folded or on hangers, however you like it.
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