Loads of JOY laundry service offers ‘village’ of support for moms and more
At Loads of JOY laundry service in North Vernon, Kelly Elkins displays a copy of the painting “Saturday Rays,” also known as “Our Lady of the Laundry,” while holding Elliot, her 3-year-old bundle of joy with Down syndrome. Loads of JOY’s threefold mission is to help mothers in need, benefit Gabriel Project of Jennings County and offer support and resources to parents of unborn or newborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
NORTH VERNON—Holding her 3-year-old son Elliot, Kelly Elkins reaches up and takes a framed image down from the mantel.
“I love this picture,” she says. It’s a reproduction of a late 19th-century painting depicting the Blessed Mother hanging laundry as she smiles down at baby Jesus, who holds a small cross.
Called “Saturday Ray,” the painting is also known as Elkins refers to it: “Our Lady of the Laundry.”
When a friend gave it to her several years ago, she had no idea how perfectly the image would parallel a unique endeavor she recently launched.
Bags nearby of clothes to be washed speak to the nature of the venture, and the inspiration behind it smiles joyfully while propped on her waist—Elliot, her son with Down syndrome.
The painting, clothes and little boy tell the story of Loads of JOY, the laundry business Elkins opened in April in North Vernon to help mothers in need, benefit Gabriel Project of Jennings County and offer support and resources to parents of unborn or newborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome.
“I believe that when you help build stronger families, you help build a stronger community,” says Elkins. “That’s the big mission behind” Loads of JOY.
“Loads” obviously refers to laundry, and “JOY” is an acronym for Jesus, Others, You.
“When we put Jesus first and serve others with his love, we experience true joy in our own lives,” explains Elkins, a member of St. Mary Parish in North Vernon.
The word also honors “the joy Elliot brings to our lives,” she explains. “He would get so excited when we folded clothes—he even makes doing laundry fun!”
While the business is based on a wellspring of altruism, the idea for it sprang from a well running dry.
‘A village for moms’
Staying home to care for Elliot, Elkins considered taking in laundry to add to the family’s income.
Then the Elkins’ well started running low on water, making laundry difficult for a family with five of six children still living at home, let alone doing laundry for others.
Finding an alternative to doing laundry at home was difficult. Digging a new well was cost prohibitive, and the laundromat “isn’t a great place for a baby to crawl around,” Elkins says.
The solution came as an answer to a prayer about something entirely different.
“I’d been praying for a way to help even more mothers,” says Elkins, whose 20 years of involvement in pro-life causes include Gabriel Project of Jennings County, which helps women facing unplanned pregnancies or crises.
That prayer, plus the idea of doing others’ laundry, began to merge.
“I thought it’d be cool to have a place where people could drop off their laundry, and I could contract moms to come in, do the laundry and bring their kids so they could watch them at the same time,” says Elkins. “And then the ideas just kind of flowed.
“I wanted to create more of a village for moms. I could have classes for them there. I could store Gabriel Project donations there.”
But without a “there,” it was all just a vision—until an optometrist turned the vision into reality.
Next to Dr. Kirk Hearne’s practice in North Vernon is a bungalow house he had rented to businesses in the past but was considering demolishing. Then he heard about Elkins’ idea.
Hearne contacted her, told her he “really liked the mission” and offered the home for a reasonable rental rate if she wanted to start the business there.
“It’s been a huge blessing I thank God for,” says Elkins, who accepted the offer. In answering her prayer to help moms, God also “found a way for me to do our family’s laundry and keep Elliot with me where it’s clean for him to roam.”
And the home’s basement proved ideal for storing items donated to Gabriel Project of Jennings County to help pregnant mothers.
She, her husband Matt and her friends Amber Bowers and Paula Hornback readied the space. Her pastor Father Christopher Craig blessed the house on opening day in April, and Loads of JOY was ready for business.
‘God can lead you … to find joy’
Loads of JOY is a for-profit business, but primarily because Elkins wants “to avoid all the red tape of a non-profit” and “keep my life as simple as possible.”
Besides, she says, the venture is not about “making a ton of money—it’s about helping families.”
That’s why Elkins keeps prices affordable—$25 per 15-gallon bag of laundry.
The moms she contracts benefit from flexible hours “and the ability to watch their kids and be with other moms” as they earn a percentage of money for each load they sort, wash, dry and fold.
Part of the income goes toward bills to run the business. A portion also pays for snacks offered to the moms during free, monthly educational programs presented by specialists.
“We’ve had sessions on cloth diapers, sleep safety and shaken-baby syndrome, and one coming up on breastfeeding,” says Elkins.
With the current customer level, she does laundry with Bowers and occasionally Hornback, hired on contract. But her hope is for more customers—“even if it’s just sheets or towels or dropping off laundry on the way home from vacation”—so she can contract more moms.
More customers would also enable Loads of JOY’s mission to help parents whose unborn or newly born child is diagnosed with Down syndrome.
Elkins hopes to offer them educational programs and resources. She knows firsthand that the number of resources can be overwhelming, so “hearing from another person who has been through it can help them make decisions.”
And she wants to offer them emotional support.
“Sometimes [the parents] need to be reminded that God is still present and can provide a way through the fears and uncertainties, and that the joy, the love breaks through everything,” says Elkins. “God can lead you through the struggles and fears to find joy.”
Or even Loads of JOY.
‘It gives us all a nice break’
“Looking back, God used our well running low to help make [Loads of JOY] happen,” says Elkins. “He’s been part of this way longer than I have.”
Trying “to be intentional in letting God lead” the effort, she prays the rosary in the house each day and invites the Holy Spirit to settle there and help her “guide the people who come here to Christ and help them see his will for them.”
She also asks God “every day to just bring to me the people that he wants to be a part of this mission, whether it’s through their talent or as a customer, or a mom who just needs a village for support.”
Moms like Michelle O’Dell, who met Elkins when seeking help from Gabriel Project. With two toddlers and a 3-month-old, breastfeeding infant, life can get “pretty crazy” for the single mom suffering through a “rough” divorce.
She finds respite at Loads of JOY.
“It’s a nice place to go and be with other moms that understand what it’s like raising little ones,” says O’Dell, who has enjoyed the company of as many as four women there at a time.
“It helps mentally, knowing that there are other parents that I can talk to. And my kids can play with the other moms’ kids and with Elliot, so it gives us all a nice break.”
O’Dell says she appreciates the educational programs. But it’s the “homey, supportive, comforting” environment that especially draw her.
Recently O’Dell went to Loads of JOY “feeling overwhelmed and just needing an outlet. The kids played. I got to talk to Kelly, and she prayed with me. When I left, I felt better than when I went in.”
As she speaks with The Criterion, she notes her plans to visit Loads of JOY in the afternoon to speak with a Catholic spiritual director, a friend of Elkins who comes to the home for a few hours on Thursdays.
“What Kelly does for me and other moms is a great thing,” says O’Dell. “It just helps knowing that someone is there and they care and are willing to help.”
Her words describe the village Elkins hoped to create at Loads of JOY, a vision captured by a photo she found online.
“I love this picture here,” she says, pointing to a framed, sepia-toned image. It shows women in simple attire washing clothes in a small river near a village, a few children at hand.
Elkins found the image on the internet while researching the history of laundry.
“One of the things I read that I really appreciated is [that] moms with their kids would go to a local creek or river, and they would together wash their clothes,” she says. “Everybody would hang out, and it was a village. It was the village that they probably all needed more than they realized.
“When I saw that picture, I saw this house being that environment, like a village with moms coming together, working, having meaningful conversations, a place of community to build each other up and encourage each other.”
The ultimate goal of Loads of JOY “is to bring glory to God,” says Elkins.
“I just want to show these moms that God does truly care. He is truly there, and sometimes it takes more courage for us just to let him love us.” †
