Washing clothes usually sucks. You haul heavy plastic baskets out to your car, hunt for quarters, sit on sticky plastic chairs, and stare at a spinning glass door for two hours. It is a grueling weekly tax on your free time.
Except in Berwyn, Illinois. Meanwhile, you can find related events here: Why New York City's Salt Marsh Restoration Is A Massive Win We Should Talk About.
Just outside Chicago sits a 14,000-square-foot facility known officially as the World's Largest Laundromat. Run by owner Tom Benson and his sons Eric and Mark, this place defies every miserable expectation you have about doing chores. People regularly drive thirty minutes from downtown Chicago, blowing past ten or twelve other facilities on their way, just to wash their socks here.
Why? Because the Bensons turned a tedious errand into an unexpected community hub equipped with an aviary, weekly pizza nights, and visits from Santa Claus. To explore the bigger picture, we recommend the excellent analysis by Cosmopolitan.
The Anatomy of a Massive Laundry Operation
Scale matters here. The floor space equals roughly three NBA basketball courts. Inside, you will find 140 washers and 170 dryers lined up in neat rows. On a busy weekend, up to 250 people occupy the building at once.
Yet the real magic isn't the heavy-duty machinery. It is how the family handles the dead time.
"Families are just stuck here for two hours," Eric Benson explains. "We said, well, what if we try to make that time not quite so painful?"
That question spawned a series of perks that sound fake until you see them. On Wednesday nights, the staff orders about 25 pizzas and hands out free dinner slices to anyone in the building. Mornings feature free coffee and donuts. During the winter holidays, an employee suits up as Santa Claus, handing out presents and taking photos with roughly 500 kids for free. Malls charge a fortune for that experience. Berwyn just gives it away.
Surviving Total Destruction
This retail empire didn't appear overnight, and it nearly vanished entirely. Tom Benson bought the business in 1999 after working as a business broker trying to sell it for a client. He liked it so much he kept it.
Then disaster struck in August 2004. While Tom and his wife were traveling abroad, a massive fire gutted the entire building, destroying both the laundromat and its dry-cleaning operations.
Instead of walking away, Tom rebuilt. When the doors opened again in January 2006, he dropped dry cleaning completely. He doubled down on making the space comfortable, adding booths instead of standard chairs, expanding the children's play area, and rethinking utility efficiency.
Today, the building boasts one of the largest clean energy installations in Illinois. Thirty-six solar thermal panels power the hot water system, saving the business up to $25,000 annually.
A Community Anchor With Real Soul
Most businesses treat customers like transactions. The Bensons treat them like neighbors.
Take the bird aviary, for instance. It houses finches as part of an ongoing population research project, giving kids something fascinating to look at while the spin cycle runs. In the summer, local library staff drop by weekly to help kids from recently arrived families keep up with their English reading skills.
The staff stays put, too. Out of 22 employees, the average tenure sits at 12 years, with several workers crossing the two-decade mark. That kind of continuity creates deep roots. Tom recalls a story about a family that moved to the area from Houston a decade ago. A staff member helped the pregnant wife figure out the machines. They grew so close that the family eventually asked that exact employee to be the godmother at their baby's baptism.
When local municipal budgets fell short years ago and Berwyn had to cancel its Independence Day fireworks, the Bensons stepped up and started footing the bill themselves as a gift to the city.
You don't get that kind of loyalty from a corporate franchise. You get it when owners genuinely care about the people walking through their doors.
Check your local listings or map out a Saturday drive. Doing your laundry doesn't have to feel like punishment.
