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Meredith Masony knew something was wrong.
Her doctor kept brushing her off. It was acid reflux, he said. If she just calmed down and took her pills, she’d be fine.
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But Masony knew. She pushed for further tests, and, finally, got a real answer: the endoscopy she demanded found an esophageal tumor.
There was good news and bad news. The good news was, she’d been right all along, and she was getting real medical help. The bad news? If the tumor was malignant, she had a 5% chance of survival.
“I thought for sure I was going to die,” she says. “I was already setting my husband up on Match.com to find him a new wife. Let’s be honest, he’s not going to do well single. We’re middle-aged. He’s bald. He’s got three kids. I just don’t foresee it as being something that would benefit him. I could be wrong! Anyway, and, of course, I’m making freezer meals for six months because I’m assuming I’m dead in the ground at this point.”
Then, more good news: the tumor wasn’t malignant. However, the surgery to remove it from Masony’s esophagus required some serious recovery. And while she recovered, she got to thinking. She’d spent nearly 15 years as a 9th grade teacher, and while she loved her job, she felt like she’d been “given an opportunity to start life over,” she says, and she wanted to do something new. Something more meaningful.
“I made this oath to myself while I was lying in the hospital bed,” she says. “I’m going to try stand-up comedy. I’m going to find other moms that I can relate to and tell them that they’re actually people and that they’re not alone going through this. I’m going to try to put myself out there to make people laugh and feel better about the hot dumpster fire mess that is their lives. I want to connect with people. That’s what I want to do.”
So, she did it. She made a page on Facebook just in time for the platform to introduce livestreaming. Masony figured there was no better way to connect with her new audience of comedy-loving moms than folding her household’s copious loads of laundry for all the internet to see?
That was back in 2016, and now, eight years later, Masony is a full-time content creator. (And also a full-time owner of The Queen’s Laundry, a wash-and-fold laundry service in her hometown of St. Augustine, plus a pool-cleaning company, plus a linen service company for weddings, plus a ten-unit building she rents out to college students, and is a “serial entrepreneur” always looking for more opportunities.) She’s accrued more than 3 million followers on her flagship Facebook page, along with 660,000 on Instagram, 350,000 on TikTok, and nearly 100,000 on YouTube.
She also just launched her own laundry detergent company, The Laundry Lady. Its first product is plant-based, biodegradable laundry detergent sheets that she’s spent over two years developing.
We’ll let her tell you all about it below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Very nice to meet you! I’m excited to get to talk to you about your product launch. For people who aren’t familiar with you, I’d like to start with a little bit of background about you and where you’re from. Tell me about you before social media.
Meredith Masony: Great. Yes. Let’s see. Me before social media. God, it’s like there wasn’t even a before. I’ve been doing this 10 years now, so it just all runs together. I was a person at one point. Let me remember what that looked like. I’m Florida born and raised. Probably shouldn’t add that into the interview. I am one of those weird natives that’s actually born and raised here. I was a public school teacher for 13 years prior to starting social media. I taught P.E., history, health, and wellness to 9th graders. That was interesting. I taught sex ed to 9th graders, basically, and then had them in the gym for the other six months out of the year. It was just utter chaos at all times. I enjoyed teaching. I really did.
It was a lot of fun until they outlawed dodgeball, which was because of me that they couldn’t play dodgeball anymore. That’s a whole other story. I taught for 13 years. Of course, during that time, I had three children, very close together. I had my first one in ’05, and then ’09 and 2010. I felt like I was pregnant for five solid years. In the midst of all of that, of having kids and teaching full time and just trying to figure out life, I got lost as a person. I wasn’t a person anymore. I was just a caregiver. I think there was a day I vividly remember being in the grocery store and pulling the freezer door to grab the Eggos and catching the reflection of myself and not knowing who that person was.
It startled me. I was like, “Who? I look like that? That’s a mess. That’s rough.” It was just like I was disconnected. I wasn’t a person in that moment. Motherhood is so isolating and so lonely, which is hilarious because you’re never alone, but you feel lonely. It’s just a lot, and it takes a toll on you. That’s not to negate all of the wonderful things it does. I know there’s people that to pick apart and they’re like, “Just be grateful.”
It’s like, “Well, I can be grateful and exhausted at the same time. I can be grateful and annoyed at the same time.” People want it one way or the other. That’s not what motherhood is at all. As I was raising these kids, I think I was turning 34 or getting ready to turn 34 when I started getting sick. I kept going to the doctor’s for this heartburn that I was having. He just kept upping my meds and he said, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You look completely healthy. You have heartburn.”
I’m like, “Yes, but I have heartburn, and I can’t sleep. My hair is falling out, and I’ve lost 10 pounds.” He’s like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You clearly are just a mom who’s tired, and you have heartburn. Take your pills.” This back and forth happened for about six months until I demanded a endoscopy. I said, “Can you just go in with one of those cameras and check because something is wrong. I’m having pain. I’m having all these issues.” He’s like, “Well, those are really expensive.”
I was like, “Well, I have insurance. Can you just do it?” I wake up from the endoscopy and he’s like, “Well, so here’s the thing. We found a lump. I have to send you into the hospital to do an ultrasonic endoscopy because I can’t really tell what the lump is.” We go in to do this next test the week later. Before I even woke up, he had come out and told my husband, “Look, your wife has a tumor in her esophagus. I can’t touch that. I’m not a oncologist. I wish you the best. Go find somebody that can look at your wife.” My husband had to tell me when I woke up that they had found an esophageal tumor.
Long story short, we find this guy who came down from the big hospital in Tampa who was now working in the area that we lived in. He basically sat me down and he’s like, “Look, I can’t biopsy this because it’s broken through your esophageal wall. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to cut you open. If it’s cancer, you have a 5% success rate. If it’s not, it can look like any of these things. You may never eat again through solid foods. You may have to tube-feed. You may have to do this. You may have to do that. You may have to do blah, blah, blah.” All the way up through to, “You will be fine, we just don’t know because we can’t see it as well and we can’t touch it.”
I’m given this news. I have three small children at home. I’m completely overwhelmed. I’m getting ready to start the school year because this is August. I’m asking the doctor. I’m like, “I don’t have any time off work. Could we maybe do this over Thanksgiving break? Because, I can’t take time off or I’m not going to get paid.” He’s like, “I don’t think you heard me. You have a tumor in your esophagus. You’re going to have to take some time off work.” I was like, “Okay, we go. We do the surgery.”
They were able to resect a portion of my esophagus, reconnect it. The guy was like, “The good news is it wasn’t cancer. The bad news is it did some damage. We had to do this fundoplication, this, that, the other thing, blah, blah, blah, but you’re not going to die.” I was like, “Well, that’s great news,” because I thought for sure, I was going to die. I was already setting my husband up on Match.com to find him a new wife. [laughs] Let’s be honest, he’s not going to do well single. We’re middle-aged. He’s bald. He’s got three kids. I just don’t foresee it as being something that would benefit him. I could be wrong! Anyway, and, of course, I’m making freezer meals for six months because I’m assuming I’m dead in the ground at this point.
It turns out I didn’t die. Shocker to the story. I did not pass away. When I was lying in that hospital bed, basically given this second opportunity at life because I thought for sure I was a goner, I had this moment where I laid there and I was like, “Have I done the things that I wanted to do with my life?” I’m a list person. I start listing off the things that I wanted to do. Did I marry the right person? Check. Pretty sure. Did I have these three beautiful, amazing kids who a lot of times piss me off and I’m exhausted? Check. Done. Career-wise, do I want to play dodgeball with 9th graders for the rest of my life? No, I really didn’t.
I hate saying that because I really admire teachers after doing it for 13 years. It’s one of the hardest, dirtiest jobs out there. They’re underpaid and understaffed, and it’s exhausting. It wasn’t my calling. It wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. I was like, “What do I want to do forever?” When I was a little kid, I always loved Barbara Walters and Saturday Night Live. Very odd mix of things to love. It was because I loved the way that Barbara Walters could talk to people, and I loved sketch comedy. I thought to myself, “How could I possibly do something along those lines?” In that moment, I said to myself, “You were given an opportunity to start life over. What do you want to do?” I made this oath to myself while I was lying in the hospital bed, and I said, “I’m going to try stand-up comedy.
I’m going to find other moms that I can relate to and tell them that they’re actually people and that they’re not alone going through this. I’m going to try to put myself out there to make people laugh and feel better about the hot dumpster fire mess that is their lives. I want to connect with people. That’s what I want to do.” I decided that I was going to do it. From that moment, it’s now been, I guess, August of this year would be 10 full years that I have been “airing my dirty laundry for the internet and for the masses.”
Along the way, one of the things that I would always sit and do when Facebook Live started to become a thing back in 2016-ish is when it really started to I think, I don’t know, when it really started to you take off. They were competing real hard at that point with YouTube and everything that. I started doing these Facebook Lives where I was folding my laundry and there’d be 10 people in there. You’d always get this comment, “Why are you folding your laundry on the internet? Who the hell are you?”
I’m like, “Why not fold your laundry on the internet? I have to do it. I’ve got to fold my laundry.” They’re like, “I can see your husband’s underwear.” I’m like, “Does your husband not have underwear? Is this a secret? I don’t understand why this is a big deal.” I just started folding my laundry and talking with my internet friends and hanging out. It just became this staple of something I would do every day. People would ask, “Why do you have so much laundry? No person on the planet should have the amount of laundry that this woman.”
Tubefilter: You have three kids!
Meredith Masony: I have three kids! It’s like, I don’t understand your question because all I do is laundry. All of my kids are in sports and then I’ve got dolls and hats. It’s like all I do is laundry, all day in, day out, that’s all I do. I’m not a person who likes to leave it for the end of the week because I would just be doing it every hour on the hour through the weekend then. I do my laundry, and I realized along the way that laundry was my love language because I always wanted them to have clean clothing. Let’s be honest, it got washed, it got folded. It never really got put away but that never bothered me.
It can sit in the living room on the table for a week, I don’t care but at least they know if they need a clean pair of pants or underwear, it’s there. I don’t care. It’s a mess in here. If you came into my house, you would smile and say, “Oh, it’s cozy,” but it’s a disaster. It’s just a disaster and that’s what it is. That’s fine. I don’t hide that from cameras. I don’t put a filter on things because that’s not how the world lives. It’s not curated. Life is not curated. If you want it to be curated, you can watch a movie. They’ve edited it. It’s done for you, but that’s not what life is.
I took this idea of my love language being laundry and said, “How could I help make people’s lives easier on a daily basis? Yes, we meet up every day, and we talk about our kids and our spouses and our lives and our pets and the things that are going on. How could I actually make an impact and help them with their daily lives?” I thought, “Well, if laundry is my love language, how could I turn that into helping other people or having an impact in some way?” A year ago, we opened our brick-and-mortar laundry facility. It’s called The Queen’s Laundry, and we do wash and fold where we literally take people’s laundry in we wash it, we fold it, they pick it up.
We do a lot of vacation rental properties because St. Augustine, where we live, is a big tourist trap. We saw this need to help people doing their laundry, and so we opened that. Well, simultaneously, behind the curtains and what people didn’t know at the time is for the past two years since May of 2022, I had been working with Viral Nation on this laundry detergent because, yes, I can help people locally with their laundry. Check, we’ve done that. We’ve been open a year now. It’s doing really well. It’s great. I want to be able to help people across the country, across the globe with their laundry, but I want to do it by making a positive impact on the earth as well.
It’s taken two years but we are at the point now where we are ready to go and we are launching The Laundry Lady detergent sheets, which are plant-based, no mess, eco-friendly. Every bit of this product and the boxes that it comes in and the mailers that we’re going to send them to you in are recyclable, biodegradable. It is good for you. It’s good for the planet. Even when you break it down on the box to look at the ingredients, it’s all organic chemistry. When you look at ingredients and you can’t read them you think, “I can’t pronounce that word. That must be bad or toxic.”
I even took the ingredient list. I went through everything and broke it down in real people language and was like, “This basically just means salt. Don’t be scared, this is organic chemistry. These are all plant-based compounds that we have put together for you so that you can have a sudsy, clean, good for you, good for the planet detergent.” I even did a story on Instagram the other day where I went to the faucet. I took a bowl. I poured in cold water. I put the bowl down. I dropped the detergent sheet in. Within under a second and a half, it’s just disintegrated into soap.
I’m like, “This is all we’re doing. It’s so easy. It’s basically eco-friendly magic that you can now have. Throw this in. Put your laundry in. It doesn’t matter if it’s a high-efficiency top loader, front loader. This is going to completely just soap up your clothes, do its job. It’s not putting anything bad into the planet. It’s saving water, and it’s just good. All the way around, it’s good for you. It’s good for everybody.”
The reason that I went this route is because I do think that there should be some disruption in the laundry detergent space. We need to get away from plastics. We need to get away from wasting water and putting chemicals into the earth that we do that we shouldn’t be putting in there. It is something that I feel– because this is my love language, I feel very passionate about that. If I can in any way shape or form have an impact positively on people’s lives and the planet, I’m down to clown, let’s do it.
Tubefilter: Incredible. I’m very curious so at The Queen’s Laundry, you’re balancing all these things. You’re running a full-time business.
Meredith Masony: I’m not balancing anything. Let’s finish the rest of your question, but there’s no balancing.
Tubefilter: Well, you’re doing all these things.
Meredith Masony: Yes, there you go.
Tubefilter: What does the average day look like for you in terms of operations at The Queen’s Laundry, managing content, all this stuff?
Meredith Masony: It’s insane. In the middle of all of that, my firstborn is graduating in May. I did stop touring, because I also do stand-up comedy. I did stop touring for this portion of the year because I was missing his stuff. I was missing events and track meets and all sorts of things. I was like, “I can’t do that.” When my kid is a senior, the rule is I have to be at home. I stopped touring so that I could be here and not miss things. There are days where I have to go in and cover shifts at the laundromat. I work an eight-hour shift, and I do laundry. We have a manager. We have other full and part-time employees that are down there. Thankfully, we’ve been able to build up to that.
We started with just myself and our manager. I was going down and working a shift, taking care of the kids, focusing on all of the content and things like that, doing all of this stuff. It’s just myself and my husband. There’s no team. When they’re like, “Your team is…?” It’s like, “There’s no team. It’s us.” I’m not going to say that that’s smart because it’s not, but when it’s necessary to go lean because you have to, that’s just what you do. Now month ago, we hired an assistant to help launch this on our end because we will be doing all the distribution. I have six pallets of laundry detergent in my garage.
Tubefilter: Oh, wow.
Meredith Masony: We will be doing all of the shipping from our home. I was like, “We’ve got to go hire somebody.” Of course, I turned my best friend and I’m like, “Hey, you want a really shitty job that pays terribly and has zero benefits other than spending more time with me?” She’s like, “Not really.” I’m like, “You’re hired.” [laughs] Thankfully because she’s a good person was like, “Yes, I’ll help you out.” She’s been great and been helping with a lot of this back-end stuff because I’m not great with the website stuff.
She’s been helping with all of that. I basically just I juggle as best I can. I drop the balls, I have mental breakdowns on the internet for public consumption, but we are sort of those people who I hope thrive in chaos. We always have to have something to do. I don’t like to sit still. I think that’s when the anxiety and the and the creepy thoughts sneak in. I’m always like, “What’s our next task? Let’s do that,” instead of going to therapy.
Which, I do go to therapy. We are very a very therapy-forward family. I will tell you that operating this many businesses and doing all of these things will land you in couples therapy. I think everybody at some point should go to couples therapy, but that’s literally where we are now because of all of the things that we’ve been doing. She’s like, “Are you guys surprised that you’re here, because based on all of the things that you’re doing, it’s probably pretty stressful at your house?” I’m like, “Yes, it is.” She’s like, “Well, do you want it to be less stressful again?” I’m like, “I think so!” He agreed and she’s like, “Great, then let’s get to work.”
On top of all of that, we’re also going to couples therapy, which I’ve been very open about because we’ve been married 20 years. It’s bound to be the time for that as well. I don’t ever use the word “balance” because I don’t think I’ve ever done that in my life. Nothing has ever been balanced that there at times you have to give 80% over here, 30% over there. Balance is a four-letter word, as my mom would say, which I never understood what she really meant by that until I was adult. I was like, “Oh, she meant the F-word. Got it.” It’s not easy. It’s exhausting at times, but every project that I get into I truly believe in and I do want it to make a positive impact. I want it to be better than before I had started it.
I want things to always be better. I want there always to be a positive outcome. I’m hopeful, I’m really hopeful that we will be able to be a disruptor in the detergent space because it’s time. It’s time to make a shift. If I can get people to drop the liquid and try The Laundry Lady and say, “Yes, this is great. This is better. I’m excited about doing this,” then we’ve won. We’ve made a change. We’ve impacted lives and the planet.
Tubefilter: Absolutely. You’re doing all the shipping yourself from your house, which is very ambitious. Is this going to be an ongoing product for sale? Are you planning to just, for the foreseeable future, do all the shipping from your house?
Meredith Masony: I hope not. I hope that we are able to sell enough that we are going to be able to purchase enough to get into dropshipping this so that it’s much easier for people to be able to order and get it quickly–and, of course, have locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Once again, when you are starting something literally out of your garage, you’re the workforce, and so you do the work. I was the first one in my family to go to college, and so I watched my parents work multiple jobs. They never had a day off. That instills a very intense work ethic with that. It also taught me, at some point, I’m going to have to take a day off or I’ll just die.
I am hoping that we are going to be able to get these projects to a place where I can be on the other side of that work and be really enjoying this and going out and promoting this and putting this in stores and really getting excited about that part of it. I am 100% happy to be in the trenches of getting this up and going to where it needs to be because if you don’t put the work in here, you’re not going to get to enjoy it on the other side. I learned that from my parents, and it’s an extremely valuable lesson to know that you’ve got to put that work in. I don’t shy away from work.
Tubefilter: What was the development process for the laundry sheets like? I know you said it was quite lengthy.
Meredith Masony: Yes, it was a lot of back and forth because I was very specific with making sure that the product was going to be completely 100% disintegrated so that it was coming up as soapy as you would want it to, and that there was nothing left inside of the drum. I had tried various ones, I had been buying laundry detergent sheets from companies all across the globe, and like, “This one didn’t disintegrate. This one had a funny smell. This one had this. This one had that. What is going on?”
When we got with the factory that we’re working with, I was very specific with scent profile. I was very specific with making sure the product was going to just disintegrate, give it the proper amount of sudsy soapiness that you would want with your clothing, give it that ability to fight stains, fight odor. There’s a lot of things that you’re trying to fight with your laundry, especially if you have kids. I guess, there’s tons of messy adults, but rolling around in the grass and the dirt and all of these things. There was a lot of back-and-forth where they’d send product. I’d test product. I had a focus group that tested the product. I would send it back with notes. They’d send it again.
We do this time and time again until I finally was like, “Here’s the one. This is it. Everybody in the focus group enjoyed this. This is what I want to do.” Then we finally nailed it in. Of course, it just takes time to create and ship and box, and of course, getting exactly what you want, the way you want it to look like, all of these little things that just smell so good, make you happy. Finally when we saw all of the proofs and everything was ready, and I looked at it. I was like, “It was sort of like, ‘Oh, this is well with my soul. That’s what it is. I’m happy.'” Then it was go time.
Tubefilter: Very intriguing process. I may be behind the times, but I know when this was pitched to me, I had no idea laundry sheets were a thing. For the dryer, of course, but not for the wash. This was totally new to me.
Meredith Masony: There are definitely others out on the market, and…I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if I should say things that I say. I don’t want to get in trouble. I was very meticulous. We were very meticulous, Viral Nation and myself, with choosing a factory that we felt was going to give the utmost highest standard product to our customers, to our internet friends. The one that we found in Sweden– Sweden, when I tell you they take this seriously, they’re like none other. They take this completely seriously. The FDA and EPA regulations that they have to follow are so strict.
My internet friends who are purchasing this, everybody that’s out there, should feel so good about this product because it has been so rigorously tested. There are places, other factories in other parts of the world, that do not do that. I was not willing to do that to save money. I don’t know if I should have said that or not, but I was not willing to do that. I just want to make sure that we’re giving everyone the highest quality product, because this is something that you are using on your clothing which you put on your body and your children’s bodies. It has to be the highest standard. I wasn’t willing to cut corners, which is the other reason it took two years.
Tubefilter: Where does social media content fit into everything moving forward? Do you have any plans or goals for your content?
Meredith Masony: My content is just 100% my life. Whatever is happening in my life that is the content that I am creating. There are people that do this and they have characters. They do these other things. That’s not who I am. I always tell people all what you’re going to get is me. That’s all I have time to offer. I’m busy and I cannot be somebody else. There are no characters here.
My content, on a daily basis, if you go to any of my channels, you’re going to hear me talking about my animals, talking about my kids, talking about my husband, talking about whatever business venture I’m neck-deep in. That is my content. My content is my real life. The reason that I went that route, and I was very specific with sharing my life in a very unfiltered format, is because I believe that it is the best way to relate to the other moms, women, wives that are out there, parents that are out there, because they’re going through these trials and tribulations as well.
Whether it’s going to couples therapy or sitting in on an IEP meeting with your kid, or your cat just ate several household items and has barfed them up on your floor, and you’re like, “Why would you eat a Lego? Why did you do that?” He just looks at me like, “Clean this up. It’s disgusting.” I’m like, “Oh, my god.” Whatever it is, that’s the content. Life is content. I think for the foreseeable future, I will continue to create in that manner because I think it’s the only reason I’ve been employed for the past 10 years.
Tubefilter: Any other plans or goals outside of content? Anything else you want people to know about you?
Meredith Masony: I really do hope that The Laundry Lady does become a disruptor in the detergent space, and we can get into people’s homes and help a positively impact their lives in the life of Mother Earth. With that being said, I want to grow this thing to where we are in stores. Obviously, my personal big goal for this Costco, baby, let’s get in Costco. I love me some Costco. It’s my Disney World. I want to be able to be in places where I can reach the masses, offer this product, get it out, grow the product line. I want to be able to have additional stain fighters and different scents of the product, different iterations of it, and all of these different things.
I want to be able to offer dryer balls and everything across, we’re using all of these things already at the laundromat. I want to be able to develop them with The Laundry Lady line. Of course, you’ve got to sell to reinvest and sell to reinvest. It’s a process, and I’m in it for the long-term.
I’ve always wanted to end up, at some point in my career, in a writer’s room for television. That’s always been a big goal of mine because I do script content constantly. I am a writer. I’ve written two books. I do at some point want to end up in a writer’s room, but I know that if that does happen, we’re talking about years away, because my youngest is going to be an 8th grader, so I can’t be up and moving out to LA or New York or Georgia or wherever the production place is until I’ve got the last one out of the house. People give me some shit at times because they’re like, “Did you forget you’re a mom with all of these other things you’re doing?” It’s like, “I’m home. I’m here. I can be here and still do all of these things and take care of these kids.” I’m also somebody who, when I do travel for work, I have to be very specific with the times that I’m doing that.
If my kid is a senior or if something is going on, I need to be home for that. I know I could not be in a writer’s room now because I can’t be gone for three months to write a show. At some point when they don’t need me anymore and they’re not at home, asking me for grilled cheese and money and rides to the movies, I can do that. That’s a goal. That’s one of my long, long-term goals. I don’t think I’ll be a person that probably, one, ever retires, or two, ever has less than four jobs at one time. I just don’t see it.
Tubefilter: Yes. That does seem to be the pattern here.
Meredith Masony: It’s a lot, but I think that that’s how we are. We also, in the middle of all of this, bought a, we call it “the murder shed.” We bought a building on a piece of property that had been abandoned and defunct. There was no roof. It was just concrete brick or concrete walls and a slab. We renovated the one building into the laundromat and the building next to it. We are almost done with is now going to be a 10 bedroom lockout apartment for college students. In the middle of all of this, we were also renovating that building. We started a linen company out of the laundromat six months ago. We now do linen service for weddings and receptions.
We own a pool company. I forgot to mention that. Not that any of that matters, but we also own a pool cleaning company. Any day of the week, you can see my husband running out to clean a pool or pick up linens or I’m down at the laundromat or somebody has to go down because the construction guy can’t get the key, somebody moved the key on the job site or whatever. That’s what we do. We’re serial entrepreneurs, and we’re those people that just, I guess, thrive in chaos. Or survive, anyway, and maybe thriving is coming.
Meredith Masony is repped by Viral Nation.
