Catering linens come back from an event in a state that has nothing to do with how they went out. Tablecloths carry wine, oil and candle wax, napkins carry whatever came off a hand, and the whole lot gets bundled damp into one bag at the end of the night. What happens in the next hour matters more than what happens in the machine.
What Comes Back From an Event
A tablecloth from a sit down meal has four or five distinct things on it, and they are all different chemistry from one another.
There is wine and other pigmented drinks, which move easily while wet and turn stubborn once dry. There is food oil and butter, which needs detergent and heat. There is candle wax, which is a solid at room temperature. And there is sugar, which is the easy one.
Napkins are the same list in miniature, plus lipstick and whatever somebody wiped off their fingers before anybody thought about it.
The bundle itself adds one more problem, which is that all of it is pressed against everything else while it is still wet.
Ink turns up as well, usually on napkins from wherever somebody was signing something. It behaves like a pigment and it wants attention before the load ever gets warm.
Wax Is the One That Ruins Linen
Wax is the item that turns a recoverable cloth into a write off, and it is also the one people handle worst in the moment.
Do not rub it and do not pour hot water on it. Rubbing pushes liquid wax deeper into the weave, and hot water spreads it across a much wider area than it started on.
Let it go completely hard first. Cold wax is brittle, and most of it lifts off in flakes with a blunt edge, a spoon or the corner of a card.
What is left after flaking is a thin film and sometimes a colour mark from dye in the candle. That goes to a warm wash with detergent worked in first, and it should not go anywhere near a dryer until it has gone.
Wax on a coloured or patterned cloth needs a second look after the wash. Candle dye can leave a faint tint behind even once the wax itself has gone, and that tint is the part a dryer will set.
Wine, Oil and the Order of Operations
Wine is a pigment. It moves easily with cold water while it is still wet, and it bonds to the fibre as it dries out.
So wine gets cold water first, as much as can be managed at the table or at a sink. Blot rather than rub, because rubbing spreads the edge of the mark outwards into clean cloth.
Oil and butter are the opposite case. They need warmth and detergent together, and cold water does nothing to them at all.
That is the awkward pair, and the order is what solves it. Cold first for the pigments and the protein, then a warm or hot main wash for the oil. Reversing that order sets the wine permanently.
Butter and sauce marks often look as though they have come out while the cloth is wet and then reappear as a shadow once it dries. That is oil, and a second warm wash with detergent worked in usually finishes it.
Handling Catering Linens on the Night
The largest single improvement to how catering linens come out is in how they are handled during the ten minutes after service ends.
Shake the solids off outside or into a bin. Food left folded inside a cloth becomes a ground in mark by morning and a much larger job than it needed to be.
Do not fold anything wet. A wet cloth folded onto itself transfers the wine on one half onto the clean half, and one spill quietly becomes two.
Get everything into an open bin or a vented bag rather than a sealed sack. Damp linen compressed in plastic overnight comes out smelling of the night before, and that smell goes into the fibre.
Count the linen back in while you are bagging it. Napkins disappear inside tablecloths and inside bins, and finding that out on the night is a great deal easier than finding it out later.
Washing and Why Folding Wet Is a Mistake
Most catering linen is cotton, a cotton and polyester blend, or straight polyester. All three take a proper wash, and the blend is the one that limits how hot you can go.
Load the drum loose. A tablecloth is a large flat sheet of fabric and it needs room to open out and move, otherwise it balls up and the middle of it never sees enough water.
One large cloth per standard machine is often the right answer. Napkins can go together in volume, because they are small and they tumble freely even in quantity.
Check every piece as it comes out of the wash and before it goes near heat. A mark that survived the wash is still fixable. The same mark after a dryer generally is not.
Napkins want the drum genuinely loose as well. They are small enough to knot together into a ball if the load is tight, and a knotted bundle washes on the outside only.
Pressing, Storing and Creases That Set
Linen and cotton hold whatever shape they dry in, which is why a cloth taken out slightly damp presses easily and one dried bone hard fights you the whole way.
If a cloth is going to be pressed, take it out of the dryer while there is still a little moisture left in it, or dampen it again before you start.
Store cloths rolled rather than sharply folded wherever you have the space. A hard fold line in heavy cotton becomes a permanent crease that shows up under lighting at the next event.
Store them fully dry, with air around them rather than sealed in a box. Anything put away with moisture still in it will smell by the time it comes back out.
Keep pressed cloths flat and away from anything that might mark them. Linen picks up colour from whatever it is stored against, and a faint transfer line is hard to explain at the next event.
Common questions about catering linens
What is the first thing to do with catering linens after an event?
Shake the solids off and get them into something open rather than a sealed bag. Wet linen compressed overnight is the main cause of both set marks and smell, and all of that happens before a machine is ever involved.
How do you get candle wax out of a tablecloth?
Let it harden completely, then flake it away with a blunt edge. Do not rub it and do not put hot water on it first, because both of those spread it. Treat whatever film is left with detergent and a warm wash.
Should red wine be treated with hot or cold water?
Cold. Wine is a pigment and heat sets it into the fibre. Blot it with cold water while it is still wet, then let the main wash deal with what is left behind.
Can tablecloths and napkins go in the same load?
They can if the drum stays loose, but a large tablecloth takes up the space of a great many napkins and it needs room to open out. Running the big cloths on their own usually gives a better result.
The Denver part
Denver sits high and the air here is dry for most of the year, which cuts both ways for anybody looking after linen.
The good side is that fabric dries quickly. A cloth on a rail gives up its moisture faster than it would nearer sea level, so damp linen is less likely to sit wet for days on end.
The other side is that dry air pulls the moisture out completely, and bone dry cotton is much harder to press flat. Taking cloths out with a little moisture still in them makes the pressing step far easier.
The water in this area runs hard, so mineral residue builds up in cotton over repeated washes and shows as a dull grey cast on white linen. A correct dose and a full rinse does more about that than any amount of extra detergent.
Winters here are cold and bright, and indoor air gets very dry once the heating is on. Linen stored through that stretch comes out crisp and creased, so rolling rather than folding matters more here than it would elsewhere.
Where to Wash a Full Set
A set of event linen is a lot of large flat fabric that needs room to move.
The machines at our self-service laundry on East Hampden Avenue offer the water volume and drum size that a tablecloth needs in order to open out instead of balling up in a corner.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a fabric care guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Catering linens come back carrying wine, oil, wax and sugar at once, and the order you treat them in decides the result. Cold water first for wine and other pigments, because heat sets them into the fibre. Let wax harden and flake it off rather than rubbing it or pouring hot water on it. Then a warm or hot main wash with detergent for the oil. Do not fold anything wet, since a wet fold moves a mark from one half of a cloth onto the other. Load the drum loose so a large cloth can open out, check every piece before it meets heat, and store everything fully dry.
WaveMAX Denver is at 10005-A E Hampden Ave, easy to reach from Denver and the surrounding area. If you have a load that will not fit at home, we have the machines for it.