Guide to Avoiding Problems with Hotel Laundries

By Theo Miles, Quality Assurance and Technical Manager

I started work at Thomaston Mills while in college in 1956.  I initially worked in fabric weaving, dyeing, and finishing and installed weaving and finishing equipment during Summer breaks during college.  After finishing college with a degree in chemistry and a minor in math, I served two years as a nuclear missile officer in the Army Air Defense station in Okinawa.  After finishing the service, I came back to work to Thomaston Mills full time in 1966.

During my career at Thomaston Mills, I was promoted to the Corporate Director of Quality and Technical Service, overseeing all of the laboratories and travelling extensively servicing our customer’s needs and developing products.  I worked on the AAMA and ASQC committees to develop shade control and physical performance standards for the apparel industry.  Additionally, I helped to develop and establish military fabric standards for the US armed services.

I have visited many hospital and hotel laundries in my long career at Thomaston Mills and would like to share these general tips with you to avoid many of the problems I have been called on to resolve:

• Do not lay the product on the floor of the laundry.  Frequently laundries which do this expose the linens to battery acid and other contaminants from the floor that destroys or degrades the cotton.

• Do not combine too many different types of products in the same load.

• When laundries combine items like tablecloths (whether colored or not) with white sheets they contaminate both products.

• Do not wash colored sheets with the same process as white sheets.  Including optical bleach on colored sheets changes the apparent shade of the colored sheet.

The above 4 tips cover most of the problems I have seen in my career. I have also submitted the downloadable laundering guide on the next tab.

  Download Guide to Avoiding Problems with Hotel Laundries