tolaĵo

The base root does not have a page here yet, so here it is. Tolo is linen: the woven cloth itself, the material, the bolt on the shelf. Add -aĵ-, the suffix that turns anything into a concrete thing made of it or from it, and you get tolaĵo - the things made of linen. Sheets, shirts, tablecloths, the contents of the linen cupboard. It is the same move as ligno wood giving lignaĵo a wooden article, or viando meat giving viandaĵo a meat dish, and word building sets the pattern out in full.

Then the sense slides, exactly as English does. Because linens are the things you wash, tolaĵo also means the laundry - the pile of it, the load in the basket, the washing on the line - regardless of what the cloth actually is these days. Lavi la tolaĵon is to do the washing. Tolaĵejo is the laundry as a place, with -ej- doing its usual work, and tolaĵisto is a laundryman. English "linen" has taken the same journey and for the same reason, which is why hotels still have linen cupboards full of cotton.

Singular for the mass. Like washing in English, tolaĵo is usually singular even when it is a heap of separate items: la tolaĵo estas seka, the washing is dry. Use the plural tolaĵoj when you mean identifiable individual articles. And keep it distinct from vesto, a garment you wear - a shirt is vesto on your back and part of the tolaĵo in the basket.