“I have an extra washer and dryer set up in my basement for people who don’t have access to running water, or a washer & dryer, or enough money to go to a laundromat. They can come to my house and do their laundry or, say if they’re like homeless, I pick up their laundry and wash it for them and bring it back to them,” explains Katelyn Dias in Cleveland, Tennessee, near Chattanooga. She calls it the Free Laundry Project.
For those who come to her home’s accessible basement, she has a futon, a coffee station, Wi-Fi, and a TV with movies alongside, “so they will not be super bored while they’re here doing their laundry.”
One question you might ask of Katelyn is why are you doing this? “I am an admin in the group Cleveland Tennessee Mutual Aid Network – and I saw a lot of people trying to raise money to go to a laundromat – and I was like, ‘well, I have an extra washer and dryer in my basement, would you all feel comfortable using that?’ and everybody answered 100%, ‘yes.’” Because there’s no similar laundry outreach in her area, “I took it upon myself to start my own thing.”
As word gets out, about 30 families so far have been blessed by this practical outreach.
Katelyn’s heart for this is very transparent. “I tried to make it as comfortable as possible. I was thinking, ‘what would I want if I was at a laundromat?’” Adding, “Anything to help them out because – like I said – a lot of these people, they don’t even have access to running water,” so she’s providing what’s needed. And there’s a benefit in this for Katelyn, too. “You can see the joy on their faces when you give them their laundry back and they smell it and they’re like, ‘oh, it smells so good!’”
One of the homeless men she helps mentioned to her how important the clean clothes are because “If you smell bad, you can’t get a job.” Katelyn tells us, “He’s right.”
There’s been no problem with home security for Katelyn and her family upstairs, though they have taken some precautions.
Initially, Katelyn paid for and provided detergent and other laundry supplies, but others are now chipping in to help keep the outreach going. “I have reached out for help for our electric and our water bill because those have doubled since we started doing this.”
Interact with and encourage Katelyn
Hear our complete encouraging interview with Katelyn:
