When we started WeDoLaundry back in Vancouver with a simple idea — pick up your laundry, wash it with care, fold it perfectly, and bring it back — we had no idea just how many Canadians were waiting for exactly this service.

Fast forward to today: we’ve now cleaned over 1.25 million pounds of laundry across Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto. That’s not a typo. One point two five million pounds.

But beyond the number itself, what’s genuinely fascinating is what that mountain of laundry tells us about how Canadians are living, what they’re prioritizing, and why more and more people across the country are choosing to outsource one of the most time-consuming chores of their week.

Here’s the story behind the number — and what it means for you.

The Number That Surprised Even Us

1.25 million pounds sounds like an abstract statistic — so let’s put it in perspective.

• That’s the equivalent of roughly 625,000 average laundry loads.
• If the average person does 400 loads of laundry per year, we’ve saved our collective customers over 1,500 years of laundry time.
• Stacked on a standard washing machine, that weight of laundry would tower roughly 90,000 metres into the sky — nearly 10 times the height of Mount Everest.
• That’s enough laundry, unfolded flat, to cover over 1,100 Canadian football fields.

Now, here’s the real question: why did over 1.25 million pounds of laundry end up with us instead of in someone’s washing machine at home?

The answer isn’t just convenience. It’s a fundamental shift in how Canadians are thinking about their time — and what they’d rather be doing with it.

What Canadians Are Actually Outsourcing (It’s Not What You’d Expect)

When people think of laundry services, they imagine dress shirts and delicate fabrics sent to a dry cleaner. The reality of what Canadians are outsourcing is far more everyday — and far more telling.

1. Everyday Household Laundry

The single biggest category we handle isn’t silk blouses or tailored suits. It’s the regular pile that accumulates in every bedroom, bathroom, and gym bag across Canada. T-shirts, jeans, socks, underwear, casual wear — the stuff that feels endlessly repetitive to wash, dry, fold, and put away.

Canadians are outsourcing the mundane. And honestly? That makes complete sense. There’s no skill barrier to folding your own T-shirts, but there is absolutely a time cost — and a mental load cost — that adds up week after week.

2. Bedding & Household Linens

The second biggest category is bedding — sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases, and towels. These are the items most Canadians admit to washing the least frequently, primarily because they’re awkward to handle in a standard home washer, take forever to dry, and take up an entire cycle by themselves.

3. Gym & Athletic Wear

Sports gear, gym clothes, yoga pants, and workout gear make up a surprisingly large portion of our orders. Synthetic athletic fabrics are notoriously tricky — they hold onto odours, lose their shape in high-heat dryers, and often require specific wash cycles most people never bother to check.

Our customers trust us to handle these right. We use appropriate temperatures, eco-friendly detergents that are tough on odour but gentle on fabric tech, and we never tumble-dry anything that shouldn’t be.

4. Baby & Children’s Clothing

Young parents are some of our most loyal customers — and it’s easy to understand why. Babies generate an almost incomprehensible volume of laundry. Between outfit changes, burp cloths, sleep sacks, bibs, and bedding, a family with a newborn can easily run 10–14 laundry loads per week. Outsourcing even half of that is life-changing.

5. Work Uniforms & Professional Attire

Healthcare workers, hospitality staff, tradespeople, and professionals who need pressed shirts and clean uniforms weekly represent a consistent, high-frequency segment of our customer base. For these customers, outsourcing laundry isn’t a luxury — it’s a productivity tool.

The Cities Driving Canada’s Laundry Outsourcing Trend

Our service spans Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto — and each city has its own laundry outsourcing personality.

Vancouver & Metro Vancouver

Vancouver was where we started, and it remains our most mature market. High density living, small in-suite washers (or no washer at all), and a population that values time and sustainability have made Vancouver an ideal city for laundry pickup and delivery. Many of our Vancouver customers don’t own washing machines — they rely entirely on us.

Calgary & Edmonton

Alberta’s two major cities have seen rapid growth in demand. With a strong professional culture, dual-income households, and long commutes, Calgarians and Edmontonians increasingly see laundry service not as an indulgence but as a simple calculation: their hourly rate is worth more than the cost of outsourcing laundry.

Toronto

Toronto is our newest major market and arguably our fastest growing. The city’s density, condo culture, and notoriously overloaded shared laundry facilities in apartment buildings have made pickup and delivery an obvious choice. We’ve seen Toronto customers switch from building laundry rooms to WeDoLaundry and never look back.

Why Canadians Are Making the Switch: 5 Real Reasons

1. Time Is the New Luxury

The most consistent theme in customer feedback we receive is time. Not price. Not quality. Time. The average Canadian spends between 2.5 and 4 hours per week on laundry-related tasks when you factor in sorting, washing, drying, folding, and putting away. Over a year, that’s up to 208 hours — nearly nine full days. Outsourcing laundry gives those hours back.

2. The Mental Load Problem

Even before doing laundry, there’s the invisible overhead: remembering to start a load, switching it to the dryer before it smells, folding before it wrinkles. This cognitive load — the constant remembering of household tasks — is real and exhausting. Our customers consistently tell us that knowing laundry is handled removes it entirely from their mental checklist.

3. Better Results Than Doing It Yourself

This one surprises people until they try it. Professional wash and fold, done correctly with commercial-grade machines, the right temperatures, the right detergents, and careful folding, genuinely produces better results than most home setups. Clothes smell better, last longer, and come back in better condition.

4. It’s More Affordable Than People Assume

At $2.25/lb with free pickup on orders of 28 lbs or more, WeDoLaundry is significantly more affordable than most people expect before they look up the pricing. A typical family’s weekly laundry runs around 25–35 lbs. At that range, the cost per week is comparable to a single meal delivery order — for a service that saves hours.

5. The Subscription Effect (WeDo Club)

Our WeDo Club subscribers are among our most satisfied customers. The subscription model removes the friction of scheduling, locks in savings, and builds laundry outsourcing into a reliable weekly rhythm. For subscribers, laundry simply stops being a chore — it’s a background service running quietly in the life.

The Environmental Side of Outsourcing Laundry

Here’s something that often surprises people: outsourcing your laundry can actually be better for the environment than doing it at home.

Commercial-grade washers are significantly more water and energy efficient per pound of laundry than consumer machines. They run at optimal load capacity every cycle, use precise amounts of detergent with no excess waste, and our eco-friendly detergents contain no phosphates or harmful chemicals.

When you combine route-optimized pickup and delivery with high-efficiency machines and biodegradable products, the carbon footprint per pound of clean laundry is often lower through a professional service than through individual home washing — especially in households that frequently run half-full machines.

1,250,000 Pounds and the People Behind It

Behind every pound of laundry we’ve cleaned is a real person who got a few hours back in their week. A parent who spent Saturday morning at the park instead of sorting whites and darks. A nurse who came home to a fresh pile of folded scrubs. A student whose landlord’s shared washer finally stopped being a source of stress.

We’ve built this company on one belief: your time matters more than laundry. And for over 1.25 million pounds of proof, Canadians seem to agree.

From our first pickup in Vancouver to the thousands of orders we now process every week across six cities, the mission has stayed exactly the same: make laundry disappear from your life so you can show up fully in it.

Ready to Outsource Your Laundry?

Whether you’re in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, or Toronto — getting started with WeDoLaundry takes less than two minutes.

• You've already spent 208 hours this year on laundry. Book your first pickup and get next weekend back.
• Choose your preferred pickup and delivery window
• We’ll pick up, wash, fold, and deliver — typically within 24–48 hours
• Free pickup on orders of 28 lbs or more
• Same-day service available as an add-on

Pricing starts at $2.25/lb. No subscriptions required to get started, though our WeDo Club members enjoy regular savings and hassle-free scheduled pickups every week.