Laundry & ironing service in Wassenaar

Wassenaar is the Dutch municipality with the most country estates from the Golden Age. More than 25 pleasure gardens were laid out here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Clingendael and Duinrell date back to the seventeenth century, Voorlinden and other estates followed later. Well-to-do residents of The Hague discovered that the beach ridges between The Hague and the coast — dry, sheltered, with clean spring water — were the perfect place for a country house.

The print above, a lithograph by P.J. Lutgers from around 1856, shows Buitenplaats Oosterbeek — one of those dozens of Wassenaar estates, surrounded by laid-out lanes and hedges. Behind the curtains, such a house ran a household of its own: alongside kitchen staff and gardeners, a family like this had its own laundry maid, ironing woman and linen room. Hundreds of metres of fine damask, sheets and shirts were washed weekly here, bleached on the meadows next to the house, ironed and put away. Laundering on the country estates was no chore — it was a craft, performed by women who had specialised in it for a lifetime.

The arrival of Prince Frederik in 1838 gave this country-estate life a royal touch; his estate stretched from Voorschoten to the coast. Today Wassenaar's lanes are still lanes, and the municipality remains one of the most spacious, greenest places in the Randstad. The difference is that the laundry maid is gone and the busy week has come instead.

Anyone living in Wassenaar today often has more garden than time. That's why we run set pickup days through Van Polanenpark, the centre around the Langstraat and the lanes between Voorschoten and the coast. Your bag is ready, and comes back in the evening clean, ironed and neatly folded with the same driver as last time. That's how Wastas works in Wassenaar — with a touch more attention to detail than average, fitting for this municipality.