Care and Maintenance of Fabrics in Institutions — NCERT Solutions

Commercial laundries are organised into different sections, each handling a specific job such as washing, water extraction, drying, pressing, and ironing. Some laundries also keep separate sections for:

• Hospital and institutional work
• Individual and personal work
• Dry-cleaning
• Fibre-specific articles like woolens, silks and synthetics
• Special articles like blankets and carpets
• Dyeing and special finishes like zari polishing
• Inspection, sorting, mending, repairing, and stain removal

In commercial laundries, the work is mainly customer-oriented. Articles are collected, checked, recorded, washed, dried, pressed, ironed, folded, packed, and returned. Commercial laundries may handle individual and institutional articles, and they often include special sections for dry-cleaning, fibre-specific items, blankets, carpets, dyeing, and special finishes. They also keep records using invoices and code tags.

In hospital laundries, the main concern is hygiene, cleanliness, and disinfection. The process includes collection from wards/OT/OPD, transportation, sorting dirty linen, washing in large machines, hydro-extraction, drying, pressing, ironing, folding, mending, segregation of condemned articles, packing, and distribution. Hospital laundry deals with much larger quantities of bed linen, patients’ and doctors’ clothing, and uniforms. Stubborn stains and perfect finishing are less important than cleanliness and disinfection.

So, the main differences are:

• Commercial laundries focus on general laundering, special finishes, and customer service.
• Hospital laundries focus on infection control, disinfection, and timely supply of clean linen in large quantities.
• Hospitals use larger machines and handle more bulk work.
• Hotels/commercial laundries emphasize aesthetics and final finish more than hospitals.