Christian Sanya is the founder and proprietor of The Laundry Room in PG County, Maryland, where she turned her hobby into a full-time employment.
According to CNBC Made It, her usual afternoon consists of spending hours tucking in shirt sleeves, lining up pant steams, and ensuring every fold is flat and unwrinkled.She eventually acquired a side gig doing on-demand washing for a firm called SudShare, where she earned up to $24,000 per month in less than a year.
Prior to that, she worked as a laboratory technologist while her husband opened the Laundry Room in Lanham, Maryland. The thriving company employs four people and generates approximately $24,000 in sales every month.
Sanya lost her job after her daughter was diagnosed with autism in 2019. With no other options, she began looking for jobs that would allow her to devote more time to her kid.
She began her new experience on Instacart, subsequently joined SudShare after a customer recommended the platform to her, and continued to explore the platform part-time after returning to the hospital as a full-time employee in March 2020 – at the height of the pandemic.
Despite her hectic hospital schedule, she managed to meet 12 hours of laundry orders every day, and when she was unable, her husband and Laundry Room employees filled in.
“You have to sacrifice a lot to know that where you’re going, the endpoint, is going to pay off,” Sanya told CNBC Made It. “I’ve given up family time, I’ve given up my date nights. I’ve given up a lot for SudShare at this point.”
Sanya also said that she and her husband attempted to purchase a laundromat eight years ago. When the company went back on the market, they had enough money saved up to buy it for around $200,000.
After spending an additional $10,000 renovating the floors and refreshing the paint, the couple plans to open The Laundry Room in September 2022. Four staff now handle the 40-machine firm on a daily basis.
Unlike the past when she spent almost 12 hours working, today, Sanya does two to three hours of work in the Laundry Room.
“I refuse to accept that you can’t have good service in our community,” she says. “I’m ready to change that and that’s what I’m doing, one laundromat at a time.”
Her dream is to turn The Laundry Room into a known laundry brand by opening more locations. Currently, she and her husband are working on a second location.