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The journey of laundry begins with dirty clothes

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Orville F. Desjarlais Jr.
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  Tech. Sgt. Aaron Norfleet studied the outside rear-view mirror as he backed his van to the concrete loading dock because he couldn't see out the back, what with the laundry piled from the floor to the ceiling.

He warily opened the back doors, half suspecting the tightly-packed laundry to spring free and escape. He reached in, grabbed the first bag of dirty laundry, looked at the laundry form wrapped tightly in the mouth of the bag and called out the name of the laundry's owner and the bundle number used to track it.

A Kellogg, Brown and Root employee, sitting on a metal chair, checked off the name from a list. It was a Monday, their busiest day. After that first bag, they had about 650 more to process.

The laundry journey begins
Before he drove to the KBR laundry facility, Sergeant Norfleet and Airman Gordan Passen had to first transfer laundry from the Camp Cunningham bins to the van.

"Most people are used to doing their laundry on weekends, so we get more laundry on Mondays," he said as he tossed bags of laundry into a cloth cart and rolled it to the van. They average 650 bags on Mondays. Normally, they get between 400 and 500 bags on Wednesdays and Fridays.

It's during this process that everyone's laundry gets loosely inspected. After having done this for more than three months, the members of the 455th Expeditionary Mission Support Group services squadron can spot discrepancies fairly easily.

"I try to be more lenient with new people because they don't know the system yet," said Sergeant Norfleet, who is deployed here from Sembach Air Base, Germany. "So if there's something wrong, I'll try to fix it."

Still, he does find bags of laundry that are beyond his ability to fix, and he sets those aside to be returned unwashed to the owner. It's a part of the job he dislikes.

"The most difficult part of our job is dissatisfied customers," Sergeant Norfleet said. "It makes me feel like I failed on the job. Laundry is a big part of morale. No one wants to wear stinky clothes."

After he jams the last bag of laundry in the van like an overstuffed suitcase, he unloads the laundry at KBR.

Once the laundry gets through the door, KBR employees wearing plastic gloves sort through it all, taking it all out of bags and placing them in their own blue plastic bins. They also ensure the laundry bag's contents match with what's on the laundry form. Discrepancies are noted, and if they're big enough - like listing a pair of DCU pants that are not in the bag - they return the laundry to the owner with a form letter explaining the problem.

Washing clothes is 24-hour job
From there, a local Afghan worker takes the bin to a washer. Each bin gets its own washer and dryer to keep laundry integrity. To keep up with the 24-hour demand for clean clothes, KBR has 85 Afghans on its staff who work 11 to 12 hours a day. The Air Force constitutes about a fourth of the 2,000 bags of laundry washed per day.

Once dried, the clean clothes are folded and inventoried yet again. Then, they're placed in their bags with the original forms and piled into an outside wooden bin specially set aside for Camp Cunningham.

Before getting loaded into the van again, Sergeant Norfleet calls out the name on the form, which gets checked off the master list, then crammed in the back of the van for return to Camp Cunningham. 

Missing socks
Despite the laundry bags getting checked, rechecked, double-checked and triple checked, items sometimes disappear.

"We have a good system, but it isn't perfect," said Jose Santacruz, KBR laundry supervisor. "We do good, but it's like home. We lose socks, too. I don't know where they go. Maybe the washing machines need them to run," he joked.

The services staff and KBR say that by contract they are allowed 72 hours to return clean clothes to customers. The turnaround is usually 24 hours.

"I've been surprised when someone stops and thanks us for what we do," Sergeant Norfleet said. "We also get a lot of help from people like Tech. Sgt. Dave Swanson, who helps us sort clothes."

"He's helped us out quite a bit, which is great because it frees up another services person to provide another service, which is what we're all about," Sergeant Norfleet said.