The cost of living and energy crisis are having a devastating impact upon many families in the UK. My mind turns to refugee families, currently living in hotels and elsewhere whilst their claims for asylum are being processed and I wonder how they cope with many often-unrecognised issues that they must be facing. I wonder how they manage to keep clean, to wash and dry their clothes? Presumably many attempt to deal with their laundry in the bath or sink of a hotel room? What about drying and airing clothes? It must be a nightmare for families with babies and young children to care for.

My mind turns back to the Canarian village where we used to live. Commercial laundries are big business in the village, and there are several that operate seven days a week with their main business being from the hotels in the south of the island, which provide important work for villagers. After all, who do you think washes and irons those blistering white sheets on the beds of all those hotels? It is unlikely to be the hotel staff, and convoys of large vans trundle from the hotels in the south of the island to our village every day of the year. Walking past the entrances to these laundries, I was always greeted with the heady heat and smell of freshly laundered sheets. I used to keep well away from the areas where used sheets and other bedding arrived for processing, as that stench was often very unpleasant.

Do you remember the days when laundrettes were a feature of most UK high streets, or at least within easy access of the town centre? Most seem to have disappeared in recent years, or turned into dry clean only businesses. I have not seen a launderette for many years. For students and those who could not afford an expensive washing machine of their own, laundrettes were a life safer. In the days before a plethora of coffee and betting shops took over the high street, launderettes provided a valuable social experience, as well as somewhere to warm up on a cold day and to meet and chat with other people.

Time has moved on, and washing machines are no longer the major, expensive purchase that they once were, and prices for a good, basic model seem to fall each year, and especially during the winter sales. Even so, there are still many people who have neither the cash, nor indeed a home in which to install one. Even for those that live in towns that are fortunate enough to have their own local launderette, this does not answer the problem for those who cannot afford to use them. It is with this problem in mind that one city council in Gran Canaria came up with the imaginative idea of a social laundry, which was said to be the first of its kind in Spain.

Social laundries already operate in a number of countries. They are created out of necessity and reflect an awareness that society must do whatever it can to help those in need. The homeless, migrants, the disabled and those in great financial need, as well as older people who have nobody to wash their linen and clothes, all benefit from such a service.

In the Gran Canaria social laundry, twenty vulnerable families in the city can now use the facility to wash and dry their clothes twice a week in large industrial washing machines and driers, completely free of charge. It is hoped this scheme will be extended across the entire city. It is imaginative schemes, such as this in the Canary Islands, that helps to provide a welcome and necessary respite for those desperately in need of care and support. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to see similar schemes set up across the UK too? Sadly, given the current blinkered approach to the specific needs and welfare of migrants arriving in the UK and others in desperate need of help, I don’t think this will happen.

© Barrie Mahoney 2025

To find out more about Barrie, his blogs, podcasts and books, go to: http://barriemahoney.com/