When Kim Bodick's New Canaan parents told her about an opportunity to take over a laundromat business in town, she moved back home from Denver and gave it a try.
She brought with her a friend, Lynne Mullins, a Colorado native who worked with her in Denver and whose mother now lives not far away. Mullins and Bodick have been co-owners of New Canaan Laundromat on Burtis Avenue for almost a year now.
They did a lot of fixing up and renovated the interior of the store -- painting the walls, putting in a new floor and upgrading the machines.
The improvements hav been appreciated by customers said one of them, Karen Babrowicz of New Canaan.
"People come in here all the time, and they say, 'Oh my ... You could eat off this floor!'" she said.
New Canaan Laundromat offers coin-operated washers (18 of them, which cost between $3 and $5.75 to use) and dryers (12; 25 cents per 5 minutes) as well as a drop-off wash, dry and fold service.
"Anything that can be washed, we can wash it for you," Mullins said.
Mullins said the enterprises biggest surprise for her has been how much the machines have to be maintained.
"You don't know how fast you can become handy until you have to," she said.
For Bodick, the intricacies of owning a business have been the biggest surprise of the venture -- "learning processes [...] everything that goes into the business --billing, cleaning, products to get."
The self-service laundromat is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wash, dry and fold services are available 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Weekdays and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
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