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Catherine Fisher never planned to enter the laundry industry. A longtime real estate agent in Corvallis, Oregon, she built a side business managing about a dozen Airbnb properties, a portfolio that produced an overwhelming amount of laundry. Towels, sheets, blankets and pillows piled up faster than she expected, and for years she paid someone else to handle it at a local laundromat.
The math that changed everything
At some point, Fisher did the math. She was spending tens of thousands of dollars a year paying someone to wash laundry at another person's business. Her first idea, buying commercial machines for her own house, fell apart the moment she saw the price tag. That's when the obvious question surfaced: if she was going to own the equipment anyway, why not let other people pay to use it too. In other words, why not open a laundromat.
Finding a space in a town that didn't make it easy
Corvallis, home to Oregon State University, has a population of roughly 55,000, and zoning rules there made finding a location difficult. Laundry use wasn't permitted in most commercial areas. Fisher eventually found a former gym in a strip mall where the original permit language happened to include the word "laundry," which grandfathered the space in for her use. She converted it into a 4,000-square-foot facility with 26 washers and 32 dryers, a build-out that started from the ground up.
Building more than a laundromat
Fisher named the business Adam's Washateria after a childhood friend who died from complications of ALS, a disease he was diagnosed with during his military service. He lived 15 and a half years after his diagnosis and encouraged Fisher to pursue the business before he died. She wanted the space to reflect his humor and dignity, which shows up in details like a disco ball and neon lighting.
Rather than maximizing the number of machines she could fit into the space, Fisher prioritized room for a kids' area, couches and wide folding tables. She also pays her staff well, even though it slows the business's path to profitability, because she wants employees who genuinely want to be there and who build relationships with regular customers.
Laundry as a form of connection
Fisher describes moments that stand out to her more than the business side of things: helping a customer who was a few dollars short, watching a young couple bring in 260 pounds of laundry they had been putting off because money was tight, and spending two free weeks of laundry service around the store's opening, during which she met a woman washing her hospitalized sister's clothes and bedding.
For Fisher, the laundromat became less about the machines and more about offering people a space where they feel seen. In a town that hadn't seen a new laundromat in 20 years despite adding 20,000 residents, she also saw a clear opportunity, one built as much on community as on convenience.
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