Laundry is the washing of clothes, towels, sheets, and other fabric items. When your shirt gets dirty or your towel gets damp, it becomes part of the laundry. The word also refers to the pile of dirty clothes waiting to be washed: “There's a mountain of laundry in the basement.”

Doing laundry involves several steps: sorting clothes by color (whites separate from darks), washing them in a machine with detergent, drying them, and folding or hanging them up. In the past, people had to scrub clothes by hand on washboards or beat them against rocks in streams. The invention of the washing machine transformed this exhausting, all-day task into something that can take just an hour or two.

A laundromat is a business where people can pay to use washing machines and dryers if they don't have their own. Laundry day is when a family tackles the whole pile at once. Some people enjoy the fresh smell of clean laundry, while others find folding dozens of socks one of life's more tedious chores.