Tide Will Now Do Your Laundry For You

Whether it happens at the laundromat, the laundry room, or just a tiny corner of your apartment where you stash the washer/dryer, Tide wants to take laundry day off your plate. This week, the detergent giant launched Tide Cleaners, an on-demand laundry and dry cleaning service “aimed at giving people the option to spend more time on life and less time doing laundry.”

Although cleaning the bathroom is America’s most hated chore, doing laundry isn’t exactly loved. If permanent press confuses you, or you’d just rather spend less time on chores, the detergent brand wants to make dealing with the dirty clothes not your problem.

Here’s how it works: Tide has 24/7 drop-boxes inside high-rise apartment buildings, offices and storefronts. Consumers download the Tide Cleaners app, and submit cleaning instructions and their box number, and are then are notified by Tide when their clean clothes are ready for pickup. At the moment, there are already drop-off boxes in Chicago, Washington D.C., Dallas, Denver, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Boston and Nashville, and the company says they’re expanding by 350 boxes per month, as well as 125 standalone locations across 22 states.

Tide will also use vans to deliver on college campuses, encouraging students to purchase a monthly plan that provides them with a laundry bag to use each time they deposit laundry in a drop box. Tide does plan to embrace existing real estate locations, like supermarkets and large stores, so that dropping off your laundry is already on your way.

Laundry on demand isn’t a new idea; corner wash & folds have been filling the needs of the too-busy and/or washer-less folks among us forever, and the past decade has seen a growing number of local and national apps to outsource this time consuming chore.

“For many people, the closest laundry room is 20 floors down or 10 blocks down the street,” Sundar Raman, Vice President of P&G’s North American Fabric Care business, said in a release. “Whether you’re one of the millions of people living in a high-rise apartment building or you’re juggling college classes, we know taking care of your clothes may not always be convenient.”