Who is responsible

Resident's belongings in a garbage bag

I sent 19 items to be laundered on a cruise ship.

The next day, all 19 items were returned to my cabin—clean, pressed, and neatly hung.

That’s how cruise ship laundry works. You don’t write your name on your clothes with a Sharpie. You fill out a form—how many shirts, pants, pajamas, and underwear—and sign your name, place the bag outside your door, and your steward picks it up.

The next day, it comes back.

Nothing missing.

Now contrast that with one of the most common long-term care complaints in nursing homes: lost laundry.

And when I say common, I mean constant.

I have a resident whose daughter bought her six pairs of black leggings. Within two weeks, she had one pair left. I made several calls and emails to the facility. Eventually, staff brought her a large garbage bag of clothing items that belonged to other residents, people who had died, or residents who had been discharged, names still labeled, and told her to pick out what she wanted.

It’s hard to imagine how strange that moment must have been, being handed a bag of other people’s belongings and told to choose. Not replacements—substitutes. Evidence that her own things were gone.

Not surprisingly, Cathy didn’t want other people’s clothes.

She wanted her leggings—the ones her daughter had bought for her.

Because the Ombudsman’s office became involved, the facility ultimately replaced the missing items and purchased five new pairs. But this wasn’t an unusual outcome because of the leggings—it was remarkable because it was resolved at all.

I don’t think you could find a single person living in a nursing home who hasn’t lost clothes, blankets, or shoes—even though everything is labeled with their name.

So when my laundry came back perfectly intact on a cruise ship with 5,500 passengers, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I’m not allowed in the ship’s laundry area, so I asked my steward, after reassuring him that my laundry was perfect and I was just curious how they keep track of everything. I wondered if items ever get lost.

He looked almost surprised by the question. He said things don’t really get lost. Sometimes laundry is delayed or ends up in the wrong cabin, but it always gets returned. A missing item is rare and treated as a serious problem.

What stayed with me wasn’t his answer, but how certain he was.

That made me wonder:

How does a cruise ship with thousands of passengers treat a missing sock as unacceptable? At the same time, a nursing home with fewer than a hundred residents routinely loses people’s belongings, even when everything is clearly labeled.

If I had to guess, it comes down to accountability and training.

A cruise ship wants you to return. They want you satisfied. They pay attention to the small things.

In nursing homes, residents’ belongings don’t carry the same weight.

And that matters, because laundry on a cruise ship is optional. You can bring ten days’ worth of clothes and never use the service at all.

In a nursing home, if you don’t have family to do your laundry, you have no choice.

You are entirely dependent on the system.

In the end, the cruise ship taught me something unexpected—not about luxury or efficiency, but about respect.

On a ship, a missing sock is a problem.

In a nursing home, it’s just another Tuesday.

That difference says more than any policy manual ever could.