Going to a dry cleaners or hand laundry is a two step process. Been that way since Roman slaves did the laundry.
You drop off the clothes. Wait a bit. Come back and and pick up the clean clothes. Most people want their own clothes back.
But certain clothing, work clothes for example, it doesn't matter if they are your clothes as long as they fit.
What if instead:
You bring in five pants and five t shirts that need cleaning, and then grab from a rack sorted by size five clean pairs of pants and five clean t shirts. No waiting. No ticket to keep track of. ( On the weekend I guess you just wear a bath towel. )
As long as you are a fairly common size, the thrift shop next door to the laundry can keep enough inventory to make this one stop scheme work.
Get Apple to bring it out as iLaundry and it can't fail.-- popbottle, Aug 12 2014 Most companies that supply staff with uniforms or protective clothing do exactly this. Throw your dirty overalls in a bin at the end of your shift, next day grab a clean pair from the rack.-- 8th of 7, Aug 12 2014 There's a wonderful Hungarian story I read years ago called Lajos the honest clerk. (Translated to Hebrew "Hapakid Lajosh Hayashar")
Can't find it even after translating to Hungarian. Seems Lajos is Luis in that language.
The story is about a clerk who lives in extreme poverty (his 18 kids eat "belt soup" immersing the fathers belt in water). He works at the national smelling authority, established after the minister of treasury's cousin opened a laundry outlet for all officials uniforms. All worked well till someone got his exact same uniform with the exact same stains on it, and claimed that they were not using any soap. This accusation was patently false, since they actually had no washing machines in the factory, hence the lack of soap was not even close to be at fault. To disprove the claims, people in the vicinity were paid for saying the soap was too smelly. But then every family in the neighborhood and even beyond were demanding payments. To avoid them, the National Smelling Authority was opened, and Lijos was the second deputy clerk of this office.
The story is of his odyssey to give back some money he gets for keeping his mouth closed about something that he saw.
I wish I could find it!-- pashute, Aug 13 2014 //Most companies that supply staff with uniforms or protective clothing do exactly this. Throw your dirty overalls in a bin at the end of your shift, next day grab a clean pair from the rack//
Except Lab coats. You send those to the laundry, wait a month, then buy another. This is why real scientists don't wear lab coats*
*Except protein scientists. I don't know what they wear, I detect them by their smell and hide before they come into visual range.-- bs0u0155, Aug 13 2014 random, halfbakery