The Laundry Brigade
Day after day we helped drag treasured family possessions outside and dump them into wet, rancid piles on the curb. Piles sometimes over 10’ tall, consisting of everything from couches to pots and pans to picture albums, children’s toys and family heirlooms. A lifetime of memories and acquired things, destroyed in a matter of hours when the flood waters of Hurricane Harvey rose to historic, devastating levels.
In the early stages, our church’s disaster response team focused on three main areas of support: homes, food and laundry. Before the storm, I would have laughed if you told me that clean clothes are as important as food when it comes to healing broken hearts. But as I stood with my sobbing friend on her front lawn, surrounded by the remains of what was once the first floor of her home, I understood. There is comfort in the familiar. When your world is upside down, putting on your own clean clothes helps you feel grounded again. When everything around you feels dirty and contaminated, knowing that your child’s favorite stuffed animal can be saved and returned to him smelling clean and fresh is a gift that touches the soul.
So the Laundry Brigade was born. We put out the all-call for volunteers and over 150 women stepped up. Mostly moms and grandmas, these are women who know the healing power of a clean, soft blanket. Organized like a fire department, when a call came in for laundry help, teams were dispatched based on geographic location and often arrived on site within the hour. Armed with gloves and trash bags, our team had four simple guidelines:
Prepare to give hugs and love on these families. You just showing up is a big deal to them.
If they want us to try to clean it, we’ll clean it. Nothing is too wet or too dirty.
Launder these items with the same care and attention you would give if it was your own. No judgment.
Contact the family a few days after you return the clean items to see if they have more laundry. We will offer to help again before they have to ask.
We delivered love, one clean laundry load at a time. In the first three weeks our team washed over 2,000 loads of laundry, all in home washing machines and most belonging to complete strangers. We used our own supplies, drove into unfamiliar neighborhoods, and hugged and cried with people we’d never met before. We washed clothes, blankets, towels, curtains, stuffed animals, even a wedding dress. But more than that, at that moment in time, we knew we were the hands and feet of Jesus for people literally crying out for mercy. We didn’t have special training or equipment. We weren’t rebuilding houses or giving away money. We simply showed up, gave hugs, washed some clothes, and tried to reflect just a sliver of what God’s love and compassion looks like.
*This piece was originally written in October 2017 following Hurricane Harvey.
