Cleaning in the Roman Empire

The Romans had cleaners two thousand years ago. Those who worked in the cleaning industry were called fullers. Romans wore tunic. Men wore it knee length and women wore it ankle length. Those in the upper echelon wore toga on top of tunic. It was pretty big measuring 6 feet by 12 feet, literally as big as drapery today. If you look at ancient Greece or Roman art, you can easily see people draped in toga.

These were mainly made of linen but nobility sometimes made it with wool. White was the main color but ivory, red or purple colors were favored by nobles. Those in power sometimes decorated it with gold to signify their social status.

Roman cleaners were very large, far exceeding our expectation. The volume was huge, too. City of Rome was about 1/6 of Manhattan and about 1 million people lived there. Since current population of Manhattan is 1.6 million, Rome’s population density was 4 times higher. It’s easy to imagine how cramped their living condition must have been. Their plain buildings lacked plumbing and people had to carry water, clean or dirty. So, washing huge tunic and toga was not an easy task. It would be much easier to use fuller’s service. There is a reason why Roman cleaners were so large in scale. Even the largest dry cleaner wouldn’t stand up to their Roman counterpart.

Cleaning with urine

Back in the days when hygiene and living condition was not so good, you can only imagine how dirty clothes get before they went to the cleaners. Since they did not have soap or bleach back then, they relied on urine to clean clothes. Urine contains ammonia that helped with cleaning and bleaching. Fullers placed big urns on the street to collect urine. Since the city was so populous, the big urns would fill every day. Collected urine would be left to age for several days to make it more potent.

Large fullers were located outside the city near a river. Large demand for fresh water and strong urine smell were the reason. Cleaning laborers would pile clothes in a very large bat filled with urine water and stepped on them to clean. They were usually slaves and their skin would be red from ammonia. After rinsing, clothes were placed on top of dome dry rack and sulfur smoke was used to bleach further. If some stains remained, they would apply white clay to cover it. Fullers were subject to customer complaints and they had to implement certain rules to protect themselves.

Of course, they could not get rid of urine smell completely and people took it for granted. Just like people take the solvent smell for granted now.

Wetcleaning and smell

If you are one of those who take remaining smell on clothes for granted, it is less than normal. We are not Romans. The main purpose of cleaning is to make clothes clean. And when it comes to removing stains and smell, wetcleaning is hard to beat.

I sometimes hear complaints that there is lingering smell on wetcleaned clothes. Every time I hear that complaint, I ask how he did the rinse cycle. If you are using proper chemicals and you have a smell, 9 out of 10 times, it is rinse. When you wetclean, I recommend 3 water changes. First with soap, second with just water and the third with a conditioner.

Some people do just 1 rinse or no rinse like drycleaning. Or use not enough water. If you did that, you may have a smell left on clothes. Especially during summer.

Our nose can’t smell the same thing for too long. I once visited my friend’s house and as soon as stepped in, I could smell strong Kimchi smell. I asked him about it and he was surprised about the smell since he couldn’t smell it at all.

Customers who used a wetcleaner seldom go back to a solvent cleaner because they don’t want go back to smelling “stuff.”