A method that provides to partially automate the feeding of pieces of laundry to an insertion machine by steps which necessitate long distances to be traveled being performed manually. With large pieces of laundry such as, for example, tablecloths and bed sheets, for complete automation a large amount of space is required and the clamps holding corners of the pieces of laundry are required to travel long distances. To achieve this, it is provided to temporarily store the respective piece of laundry after it has been separated and before it is delivered to an insertion machine. It is furthermore provided that in a first corner of the piece of laundry is supplied or held ready by an automatic separator for an operator to manually locate the second corner of the piece of laundry. Partial automation can be achieved without the cycle time being adversely affected owing to manual handling processes.