Collective laundry rooms are a specificity of Swiss buildings which may surprise people arriving from abroad. These places with very codified and restrictive customs are often a source of neighborhood tensions, but they can also create social bonds.
This content was published on
January 10, 2025 – 11:00
Frédéric Boillat / Noémie Guignard, RTS
Often located in the remote slums of buildings, at the end of austere corridors, collective laundry rooms or laundry rooms divide the Helvetians, between those who like to meet there to discuss and others who fear neighborhood conflicts .
“The Swiss know exactly when they will do their laundry over the next twelve months.”
Emily Engkent, content producer
These places impose organizational constraints ranging from limited time slots to bans on Sundays, including more or less complicated card recharges. Not to mention the detergents forgotten in the machines, the dirt left here and there or the doors double-locked for obscure reasons. And, often, little notes to point out a mistake to a neighbor or, sometimes, to send him names of birds.
A ritual little appreciated by newcomers to Switzerland
A sign that this essential tenant ritual is a very Swiss particularity, foreigners who come to settle in Switzerland are frequently disillusioned once they cross the door of the laundry room. Emily Engkent, a Canadian who has lived in Zurich for ten years, even speaks of a “culture shock” when she arrived in the country and she still doesn’t enjoy going there.
Interviewed on Sunday in Mise au point, this video producer for social networks notes that her integration in Switzerland went through three key stages: Swiss German, fondue and the laundry room. She also points out with humor that it is strange to say the least, with the system of registering in time slots well in advance, that the Swiss know when they are going to wash their clothes a year in advance…
A source of conflict
Another point put forward by Emily Engkent: it is very likely that you will be yelled at by an old lady. And it is true that the laundry room is often a major source of neighborhood conflict. In Switzerland, one in three tenants gets angry every month because of the laundry room.
Laundry rooms are often places of conflict between neighbors.
RTS
The call for testimonies launched by Mise au point thus confirmed the important place of the laundry room in the lives of Swiss men and women and the tensions it can arouse: “A total hell, between the lack of hygiene of others and non-compliance with the timetable. “We found excrement in the joints of the drums.” “I had one day every three weeks; as soon as I had children, I had my spine.”
“It ended with two weeks of sick leave for a knee that had doubled in size. For laundry…”
A woman attacked in Broye
Going to wash your clothes can even become a source of stress. Also interviewed by RTS, Nathalie felt touched in her privacy when someone emptied her laundry without her knowledge. “It’s my stuff, it’s clean and someone is going to touch it with hands I don’t know.”
More serious, a Broyarde who wishes to remain anonymous, confides having been attacked in her laundry room. Following a disagreement, a couple came down there and verbally assaulted her, then the husband violently shoved her. “It ended with two weeks of sick leave for a knee that had doubled in size. For laundry…”
For Lucerne lawyer Anton Bühlmann, who headed a conciliation authority called upon to manage such conflicts, it is not surprising that laundries generate so much tension. “We are touching something extremely personal, the clothes, the underwear, and we are exposing them almost publicly. You could almost say we get naked in the laundry room.” He also believes that the laundry room system no longer corresponds to the times, with a pace of work that differs from in the past, couples working outside the home and single people who have to take care of work and housework.
Places of life and social cohesion
Faced with this situation, new constructions often favor individual connections, or even washing columns directly in each apartment. But that doesn’t mean the death of communal laundry rooms.
More and more, we are also trying to make them places that are certainly functional, but also pleasant. In Lausanne, the “Le Bled” cooperative has designed a modern and connected laundry room, accessible 24 hours a day and equipped with an application indicating free machines. “The goal was to make it a real place to live,” notes Laurent Guidetti, one of the project’s architects. With this in mind, the laundry room was not installed in the basement, but upstairs, in a bright location opening onto a beautiful terrace.
“I can do everything from A to Z and what’s more I chat with people, we laugh, we chat, it does our soul, our heart good.”
Kalissa Benhanaya, tram driver
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Initiatives also exist to make these places real spaces of social cohesion. In the heart of Geneva, the Vieusseux city has relied on its laundry room as a meeting place for almost a hundred years, with dedicated staff to manage the space and create connections. Tenants can do several laundry there at once, but always by appointment.
Raja Hammi, one of the caretakers, brings the place to life and helps make it a point of exchange between residents and meeting points between very varied profiles, whether they are elderly people who need help. to do their laundry, younger people who have little time to devote to this chore and even volunteers who wash the jerseys of the local football club. Recalling the spirit of the wash fountains of yesteryear, we can take the time to chat and find out about the latest news. Or just drink coffee.
Raja Hammi in his collective laundry room.
RTS
“I can do everything from A to Z and what’s more I chat with people, we laugh, we chat, it does our soul, our heart, everything good,” describes Kalissa Benhanaya, tram driver. “They are all adorable and that makes me happy,” says Raja.
And in the end, transforming the chore of laundry into a relatively pleasant task is perhaps the whole point of these very special spaces of Swiss daily life.
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