Laundry Attendant: What is the cost of hiring?

What is a laundry attendant? 

A laundry attendant typically washes, dries and folds linens and clothing. Depending on your business, these workers may clean bed and bath linens, uniforms or regular apparel. Laundry attendants often operate commercial laundry machines and must follow safety and sanitation guidelines, such as those established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for Healthcare laundry attendants.

Why hire a laundry attendant?

Laundry attendants help maintain clean environments that support positive experiences and guest or resident satisfaction by ensuring linens and uniforms are ready for use.

Hiring a laundry attendant may be beneficial if your facility requires frequent linen cleanings, such as the turnover in hotels, or a need for infection control. laundry attendants can also help improve hospitality or customer service.

Key contributions of a great laundry attendant:

• Maintain cleanliness standards across high-volume laundry operations
• Support efficient service delivery by ensuring linen availability at appropriate times
• Follow infection control, sanitation and safe handling practices

Defining your hiring needs for laundry attendants

Your business’s amount of laundry and expected turnaround times can help determine whether you need a full-time, part-time or seasonal laundry attendant. Full-time roles are typically well-suited for 24/7 operations such as hospitals, nursing homes and large hotels. Part-time employees can help cover peak hours on weekends or seasonal needs in hotels, residential communities like student housing, or gyms.

You might also consider hiring for roles such as cleaner or tailor, depending on your housekeeping and textile-based services and needs.

Types of laundry attendants

Laundry attendants may specialize based on the industry, laundry volume or type of textiles cleaned. Types of laundry attendants include:

• Healthcare laundry attendants: Specialize in sanitizing linens and hospital gowns to support infection control and positive patient outcomes.
• Hospitality laundry attendants: Work with hotels, resorts or cruise lines to clean high volumes of bedding and towels, fold laundry and manage linen inventory for housekeeping.
• Dry cleaning attendants: Operate dry cleaning equipment and focus on delicate garments, such as suits or fabrics that require dry cleaning like silk, and may have customer service duties, such as accepting items from customers, noting cleaning instructions and providing clean items to customers.
• Industrial laundry workers: Work in commercial laundry plants, which have industrial equipment. 
• Residential facility attendants: Support senior living or other related communities by cleaning and managing personal clothing and linens and may directly interact with residents by picking up and delivering laundry.

To increase the visibility of your job post, consider including top keywords that candidates are searching for. According to Indeed data, these are the most popular search terms that lead to clicks on laundry attendant job postings:

• Laundry attendant
• Housekeeping
• Laundry
• Cleaning
• Hotel
• Laundry aide
• Hotel housekeeping
• General labor
• Laborer
• Housekeeper

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Where to find laundry attendants

You can generally find laundry attendants through hospitality job boards, staffing agencies and referrals from current employees. 

To find the right laundry attendants for your team, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

• Work with local staffing agencies: Use staffing partners to fill high-turnover roles quickly with vetted candidates.
• Post on hospitality or healthcare job boards: Reach candidates with industry-specific linen and laundry experience. 
• Connect with workforce development centers: Network with government-run job centers that can help place individuals trained in custodial or laundry operations.
• Post flyers in the community: Place flyers in nearby businesses or residential locations to inform job seekers that you’re hiring for a laundry attendant position. 
• Ask for employee referrals: Ask employees to refer friends, family or previous coworkers who might be interested in a laundry attendant role.
• Post your job online: Try posting your laundry attendant job on Indeed to find and attract candidates.

Skills to look for in a laundry attendant

A great laundry attendant will have many of the following skills, developed through a mix of professional experience, training or education:

• Experience operating commercial washers, dryers and pressing equipment, such as irons or steamers
• Knowledge of proper sorting, washing and drying procedures for different textiles and soil levels
• Ability to detect stains and apply spot-cleaning techniques, including blotting rubbing alcohol or cleaning solutions
• Basic understanding of workplace safety protocols, including chemical handling, machine safety and personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare settings
• Time management skills to handle large volumes of laundry while maintaining quality standards
• Physical stamina to fold and move loads of laundry for extended periods

Writing a laundry attendant job description

A well-crafted job description is where all these elements—skills, salary data and candidate search behavior—come together.

A strong laundry attendant job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities and the required and preferred skills for the position. You may also want to include information about your company culture, benefits and perks to attract top candidates.

Ready to get started? Check out our full guide for writing laundry attendant job descriptions.

Interviewing laundry attendant candidates

To get a better sense of a candidate’s skills and experience, be prepared to ask questions about the following topics:

• Operating industrial washers, dryers and folding linens and clothes efficiently
• Following protocols for sorting, treating and processing different fabric types and stains
• Managing laundry volume during peak periods or with limited staffing
• Maintaining a clean and organized workspace to meet health and safety standards
• Identifying and reporting damaged or missing items