Tuesday, February 5, 2013

L is for Laundry!

Meet Ida (pronounced E-da), head of laundry services for the beautiful Carnival Breeze.  He manages ALL the laundry and linens for both guests and crew on every cruise, and he is busy every day…especially on embarkation day, because that is when the “old” guests get off and sheets/towels have to be washed before the new folks arrive.

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These huge dryers holds 240 pounds of laundry…each!  There were several of them.  The dryers are run by the hot exhaust from the massive ship engines.  Everything possible gets used and/or recycled.

How’d you like to to wash and fold even ONE load a day?!  These make my normal laundry pretty insignificant.

I was fascinated by the machines that handled all the sheets.  To begin with, a long, narrow canvas basket thingy with a spring loaded bottom holds the wet sheets lengthwise before they are fed by two guys, lengthwise, straight onto the conveyor belts of another big machine.  This machine first begins drying the sheets, and therefore ironing them, as they are fed continuously onto more conveyor belts through more machines…where they wind up being folded in half, then folded again and again until they are plopped out (a definite laundry term) onto a small table.  This is when they are touched by another human, picked up, and stacked on a different table in groups of 10 sheets.  Always 10.  Then they are stacked up and sent to the cabin stewards.

Of course before the sheets go into the machine, it is programmed according to sheet size, since they have two sizes.  That is step 1.

There is a separate room for dry cleaning, which is a different type of dry cleaning than is done on land.  This all has to be environmentally safe, as well as using special laundry detergent for the washing.  Everything is highly monitored and controlled.

We love being Platinum cruisers with Carnival because we get FREE laundry done.  That totally rocks!

My iddy bitty machine is washing a piddily load right now. 

Have you gotten your laundry done today?  No complaining!

8 comments:

Jean(ie) said...

Makes our laundry look miniscule. Oh my! I like how they re-use the exhaust to dry the sheets. That's smart use of the resources. Wow!

Sandee said...

I've one more load and then I'm done.

Quite a work of art here. I'd hate to work there though. I've enough trouble doing my own laundry. Just saying.

Have a fantastic day honey. Big hugs. ☺

Barb said...

Ironice that you should ask. My washer, which I bough a year ago December, started making a gawd-awful noise yesterday. Something flimsy and plastic is probably broke. To add insult to injury, I just tried to call Sears repair and their system is down so they can't make any appointments. Lovely.

I can't wait until I have Platinum status... it's a ways off but I'ma workin' on it!

Have a lovely laundry day! big hugs xoxo

Joy said...

I bet that sheet process was fun to see! And I'm really glad I don't have to deal with THAT much laundry, too. I did a couple of loads over the weekend, which will hold me for several days. :-)

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

gosh that's a bunch of sheets!!

smiles, bee
xoxoxooxox

Jackie said...

Believe it or not my laundry is done. But nothing else is done! *smiles*!

I am fascinated by this entire process too. I am so glad you thought to get a picture and tell us about how they do it!

I would never have thought to check out how the laundry was actually done. But, I am always so picky about things such as sheets and spreads in public shared rooms.

Walter and I just may have to take a cruise someday too!

I want to see their laundry room now. I really really do!

Happy evening to both of you and big hugs always!

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Haley D. said...

Very cool how everything is reused or recycled! I like the conveyor ideas to dry, iron, and fold. Confession: our laundry is clean but hasn't been folded. Shame, shame!