Certified Laundry & Dry Cleaning Operator
Laundry & Dry Cleaning Operations
Twelve weeks to run a hotel laundry: fabrics and chemistry, machines, stain removal, guest garment liability, and the counting that stops linen quietly disappearing.
What you will be able to do
- ✓Sort and wash any hotel or guest item correctly
- ✓Remove the common stains without damaging fabric
- ✓Operate and maintain laundry machinery safely
- ✓Handle guest garments with correct intake and liability control
- ✓Press and finish to presentation standard
- ✓Run a linen count that reconciles
Week by week
1 Fabrics and fibres
Covered
- Natural fibres: cotton, linen, wool, silk
- Synthetics: polyester, nylon, viscose
- Blends
- Care labels and symbols
- Shrinkage, colour bleed and pilling
- Testing an unknown fabric safely
Practical: Identify twenty unlabelled fabric samples and state the correct treatment for each.
2 Chemistry of washing
Covered
- Detergent, surfactants and water
- Water hardness and its effect
- Alkalinity, bleach and oxidisers
- Softener: when and when not
- Dosing and the cost of overdosing
- pH and fabric damage
Practical: Run comparative washes at three dosing levels and assess the results.
3 Sorting and load building
Covered
- Sorting by colour, fabric, soil and risk
- Load size and why underloading is as bad as overloading
- Infected and soiled linen procedure
- Bagging and transport
- Never shaking linen
- Tracking loads through the process
Practical: Sort and build six loads from a mixed delivery, justified in writing.
4 Machines: washers and dryers
Covered
- Washer types and controls
- Programme selection
- Dryers and moisture retention
- Over-drying and fibre damage
- Lint traps and fire risk
- Daily and weekly maintenance
Practical: Operate a full cycle unsupervised, including the maintenance checks.
5 Stain removal
Covered
- Stain categories: protein, tannin, oil, dye, combination
- Blood, wine, coffee, makeup, ink, grease
- Solvents and spotting agents
- Temperature and why heat sets stains
- Blotting technique
- When to stop and declare it unrecoverable
Practical: Treat fifteen stained items across all categories.
6 Dry cleaning
Covered
- What dry cleaning is and is not
- Solvents and their hazards
- Pre-spotting before the machine
- Machine cycle and filtration
- Items that must never be dry cleaned
- Post-cleaning inspection
Practical: Process one dry cleaning load from intake to finish under supervision.
7 Pressing and finishing
Covered
- Irons, presses and steamers
- Temperature by fabric
- Shine, scorch and how to avoid both
- Pressing shirts, trousers, jackets
- Hanging, folding and packaging
- Presentation for guest return
Practical: Press and finish ten garments across fabric types.
8 Guest garments and liability
Covered
- The intake check and why it decides disputes
- Documenting existing damage before accepting
- Tagging and tracking
- Turnaround promises and meeting them
- Lost or damaged items: the procedure
- Valuing a claim fairly
Practical: Take in fifteen guest items with full condition documentation; then handle a simulated damage claim.
9 Linen control and par levels
Covered
- Par levels and stock rotation
- Counting in and out
- Reconciliation and investigating a gap
- Condemning worn linen properly
- Guest theft and how it is handled
- Ordering and budget
Practical: Run a full linen count and reconcile a week of movements.
10 Health, safety and the laundry environment
Covered
- Heat stress and hydration
- Chemical storage and spill response
- Machine guarding and entanglement
- Fire risk: lint, solvent, over-dried linen
- Ventilation and humidity
- Manual handling of wet loads
Practical: Complete a safety audit of the laundry and write up the findings.
11 Workflow, productivity and handover
Covered
- Planning against room turnover
- Batching and machine scheduling
- Bottlenecks and how to see them
- Priority items and rush jobs
- Recording chemicals and consumables
- Writing a laundry handover
Practical: Plan and run one full day's laundry against real room turnover; submit a handover.
12 Running a laundry, final assessment and going to work
Covered
- Supervising a laundry
- Costing: chemicals, power, water, labour
- Outsourcing versus in-house
- Training and standards
- Your record
- Interviews and the hire-ready register
Practical: Run the laundry for one full day as the person in charge.
Register
Fee ₦35,000, payable on registration.
Who it is for
Anyone entering laundry work, including housekeepers specialising.
What you need
- •Able to work in a hot, humid environment
- •Careful and methodical