From Dhobi Ghat to Link Road: Mumbai’s washing tradition
Mumbai has washed clothes for the city by hand for over 130 years. A visit to Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat, and what we learned from it.
Doing laundry at home or sending it out: a month’s costs
Machine, water, power, detergent and your own time, priced for a family of four in an Andheri flat, and compared with our rates.
Customers often ask whether sending laundry out really costs more than doing it at home. We worked it out for a family of four in a two-bedroom flat in Andheri, washing about 32 kg a month.
At home, a 7 kg front-loading machine costs about ₹32,000 and lasts around eight years, so roughly ₹330 a month. Twenty washes a month use about 18 units of electricity, about ₹200 in Mumbai, and around 1,200 litres of water. Detergent and softener come to about ₹350. If a part-time helper irons at home, add about ₹1,500 a month. The total comes to roughly ₹2,400 a month, plus repairs, the space the machine takes and, in the monsoon, clothes that do not dry.
Sending the same laundry to us costs ₹89 a kg for wash and fold, so 32 kg comes to ₹2,848. If you also send 60 pieces for steam ironing at ₹18, that adds ₹1,080. On a weekly pickup with the 10 percent saving, the total is about ₹3,530 a month.
So sending everything out costs about ₹1,100 more a month. What you get for it is roughly eight hours of your time, no wet clothes in the living room in July and no machine to fix. Many of our customers choose a mix. They wash everyday clothes at home and send us bedsheets, towels, office shirts and anything that needs proper drying. That usually costs ₹1,200 to ₹1,800 a month and covers the heavy work.
