At 6 a.m., 82-year-old Joan Carter starts her day washing, drying and folding dozens of loads of laundry. What some people consider a chore, is to Carter a beacon of love, family and service.
Carter is one of the laundry attendants at Home of the Innocents, a residential care facility for children and young adults in the Irish Hill neighborhood. She and six other laundry attendants wash clothes, bed sheets, pillow slips, mop heads and towels for the entire facility.
Method to the laundry madness
Over nearly two decades working at Home of the Innocents, Carter has witnessed many changes. When she started, the laundry room had two washers and one dryer. Now, there are three industrial washers, two regular washers and four large dryers.
Each laundry attendant has their own cleaning method, but Carter has the most unique method. She said it starts the minute the clothes, linen and blankets enter the hefty, industrial washers.
Carter has the washing times memorized down to the second.
“Most of the time it takes 29 minutes and 10 seconds to wash and it takes between 30 and 40 minutes to dry,” Carter said.
Once the clothes are washed and dried, Carter said the next few minutes are essential to prevent wrinkles in the clothes.
“I let [the clothes] cool down so they won't get wrinkled,” she said. “Because if you take them out while they're hot, they all land in a basket and that heat is just circling through them and causing them to wrinkle ”
Once they're cool, she separates them on her rolling clothing rack.
Children need clean clothes
Carters pays close attention to the clothes for the residents who live on her unit, Maple Way. She calls them her children.
“I’m particular about their clothes, I'm particular about them…because I want them to be taken care of,” Carter said.
Carter labels some of her children’s clothes with notecards to keep them organized. For the clothes that need hangers, she has a color-coded system, she said.
“[For] my girls [I use] ‘loud-colored’ hangers, like the yellow, pink and the orange. And the boys, I use the dark-colored hangers for theirs,” Carter said.
By 10:30 a.m., Carter starts delivering fresh and folded clothes, linens and blankets to her unit.
She hangs up the clothes and puts away the folded blankets in each room. Carter said keeping her children’s stuff clean is her way of letting them know that she cares about them.
“I pray for them every night because they need us,” she said. “And being here, I feel like we are the No. 1 family because we are here with them every day and almost 24 hours a day.”
Many of the children are not able to talk, but Carter said she always makes an effort to speak to them with a smile.
“We are a family, and we've supposed to treat them like family. And that's what I do,” she said. “I go up, I speak and laugh and talk to them, and some can respond and some can’t. But they do a little something to let you know that they’re listening.”
There are about a dozen children on Carter’s floor when it's at full capacity.
“I've seen the children go, I've seen the children come, and I've just enjoyed them all,” she said. “I love children. And I'm gonna make sure I do my part to make them as happy as I can.”
A joy-bringer
Carter said she gets her meticulous laundry handling skills from her late mother. Her mother worked at a laundromat in Hopkins County for decades when Carter was younger, she said.
“She had certain customers that would come in and bring her their clothes,” Carter said, “and they would pay her extra to do their clothes because they knew she was going to do them like I do mine.”
Carter’s effort to keep her children tidy has not gone unnoticed. Because of her dedication and kindness, the staff and residents at Home of the Innocents gave Carter a nickname: Nana.
Laundry manager Naeshonda Forte said Nana represents Home of the Innocents’ “happy family.”
“Even though we're not her biological kids. But she has adopted each and every one of us and told us we are all in this together.” Forte said.
She said Carter is “a beacon of joy” and inspires her to be the best version of herself.
“That's part of the wisdom knowledge that she had. And when you sit down and you talk to her, and you listen to some of the things that she says and you'll be like ‘Miss Carter, You such a lovable person,’” Forte said.
What’s next for Nana?
Outside of work, Carter has five children of her own. And she has a dozen grandkids, more than twenty great-grandkids and two great-great grandkids.
Carter said she plans to retire by the end of the year to spend more time with her family. Although she plans to stop working, Carter said she’s considering ways she can stay active during her retirement.
“It’ll be at my own time and my own pace,” Carter said. “ We have a lot of volunteers at church that do different things. Then I can help somebody else out sometime. I just don't want to go home and sit completely down.”
She said she won’t forget about her children at Home of the Innocents.
“I love working here. I hate when I retire because I’ll miss my children but by the Lord’s will maybe I can come by and visit every once in a while, you know. Then I’ll miss the employees too,” she said.
Forte said Carter deserves nothing but love and appreciation for everything she does for the children at Home of the Innocents.
“She's a beacon light in our lives,” Forte said, “And now it’s time to sit back and kick her feet up and let somebody take care of her.”
Forte said, one day, she hopes to name the laundry room after Carter, the woman who brings a smile to everyone’s face.
