Doing The Laundry Without The Laundromat

When we are on an extended trip, we always plan to do laundry somewhere along the way. There have been some really neat encounters we've had in laundromats around the world. We've met students in Heidelberg and had instruction in French accompanied with lots of hand signals in Paris. Iceland was another interesting occasion where we had to receive instructions over the phone from the owner of the washer and dryer at a small campground. There was nothing on the washer and dryer that looked even vaguely familiar for us to even guess about what to do.

All of that said, I found some suggestions online that sound feasible if you can't find a laundromat or don't feel comfortable. One of the suggestions is to use a gallon sized Ziploc bag. Your put a small amount of detergent or even shampoo if you have no detergent into the bag with water and your article of clothing. Zip it closed and agitate. Do the same to rinse several times and hang up the item to dry. When I hand wash items, I usually roll them in a towel after I've wrung them out. That gets out just a little more water and speeds the drying time.

There are several products you can buy that are a bit larger and accomplish the same thing but are a bit pricey in my opinion.

Another option to washing your clothes without going to the laundromat is to wear them into the shower. Now I will admit to doing this with a bathing suit to rinse the chlorine from it but I never considered wearing clothes in and washing them that way. Hmmm. Given the option, I'll go to the laundromat. In a foreign country it's challenging and fun and you meet the nicest people.