Rug cleaning in Wemmel

Who lives here

The 3rd Taalbarometer of the Vlaamse Rand (VUB-BRIO, 2024, a survey of 2,273 residents in 19 municipalities): 37.7% of Rand residents speak only Dutch at home (against 45% in 2019), 23% only French (20% in 2019), and 104 languages are recorded against 87 in 2019. The municipalities with language facilities show the lowest scores for Dutch. One resident in five in Machelen, Vilvorde, Wemmel and Zaventem grew up in a household where neither Dutch nor French was spoken.

Dogs, children, entertaining, house shares: it is the way people live here that decides how often a rug is washed, not a theoretical calendar.

Collection

Wemmel adjoins Jette and Laeken directly; only the R0 ring road, opened in 1957, separates the south of the town from Brussels — the heritage inventory speaks of a "totally urbanised" fabric morphologically welded to the capital. Some ten kilometres and ~25 min from the Grand-Place. Works under way: "Herinrichting Ring Noord", which is rebuilding the R0 from the E40 at Grand-Bigard to the E40 at Woluwe-Saint-Étienne in four zones; the Zellik-Wemmel section comes after Vilvorde and Grimbergen.

We collect and we bring back: the washing is done flat at the workshop, never with a hose in your living room.

The building stock

Wemmel grew from 1,285 inhabitants in 1846 to 12,533 in 1970. The Flemish inventory of built heritage reads clear layers there: Art Nouveau, Art Deco and cottage-style terraced houses from 1910-1930 — notably on de Limburg Stirumlaan, with its figurative and floral tile panels —, then uniform interwar housing estates, then post-war modernist and social housing blocks.

The type of floor changes everything: on an old parquet, a rug traps the mineral dust; on cold tiles, it takes up damp from underneath.