Free Laundry for Homeless Guests – Crisis at Christmas
This holiday season, we are partnering with Crisis at Christmas to provide care and support to people experiencing homelessness.
Last year, the Crisis campaign provided nearly 3,500 individuals with much needed support, and housed 450 people in hotel accommodations in London, supplying them with warmth, food, wellbeing resources and more.
In the spirit of offering a helping hand, we will be working with Crisis at Christmas to offer free laundry services to 100 individuals staying at their accommodation over the holidays.
ihateironing laundry services to help those experiencing homelessness
We recognise how small gestures can leave a big impact, and wanted to do our part to help over the Christmas and New Year periods.
Anna Bohoslawec, Operations Manager for Crisis at Christmas, explains the logistical challenges they’ve faced over the years. “The sites we use as our Crisis at Christmas centres rarely have laundry facilities for us to use, or those that are available can’t possibly handle the vast quantity of clothing our guests are keen to wash. Some have a single domestic machine to hundreds of guests if we’re lucky. The next challenges were how to dry everything after washing, and then to reunite guests with their clothes.”
Guests who will be staying at Crisis at Christmas hotels across London will receive free service washes over the the period of their stays, with items collect and delivered right to their accommodation. We hope that this will help individuals feel comfortable and cared for with fresh clean clothes.
“This Christmas guests joining us in our hotels will be coming in from the streets, having had very few or no opportunities to clean their clothes,” says Anna, “on arriving in our hotels, guests will have their own shower and access to new clothing. They can then turn their attention to their favourite clothes to get these cleaned.
Being able to give our guests the dignity to wear their favourite clothes, all clean and fresh, is one more step to feeling positive and supported as we head towards the new year.”
This partnership goes hand in hand with our existing initiatives to give support to the homelessness charity and back their efforts to help people out of homelessness, including our Donation to Crisis Scheme in East London.
How you can support Crisis at Christmas
There are many ways you can support Crisis at Christmas – you can raise awareness about our initiative, as well as donate, volunteer, or fundraise directly through the charity.
ihateironing is a network of professional dry cleaners providing the finest dry cleaning and laundry service with convenient collection and delivery at any times that suit you. We operate in London, New York, Brighton, Edinburgh, Oxford, and beyond.
Read more news and insight about ihateironing on our dedicated ihateironing blog.