Saturday, September 17, 2011

Laundry


"After enlightenment, the laundry."       
Zen Proverb

In order to make a small travel wardrobe work, you have to do laundry daily. It only takes a few minutes. There have been improvements to make this task easier that don’t add loads of weight to your bag.

A simple bit of twine makes a good laundry line or you can try Flexoline’s woven rubber laundry line that allows you to secure your laundry between the weave. They are easy to leave behind though. We lost both twine and rubber laundry lines on our last trip – thankfully it was near the end.

You can now buy bar laundry soap that doubles as a bath bar or small packets of laundry sheets like the ones shown at the side, when those run out you can pick up small packets of local washing powder (every culture does laundry).

Most hostels don’t have sink stoppers (some don’t have sinks, depending on what part of the world you’re traveling to) or the bath is down the hall. You can take a universal sink stopper. We’ve carried Sea to Summit’s folding bucket, which folds down small and works well.

If the climate isn’t too cold and you’ve packed fast drying clothing, your laundry should be dry or mostly dry in the morning. My socks and travel bra sometimes didn’t quite make it.

Another space saving tip - pack towels are great. They fold down small and dry very quickly, certainly smaller and faster than the traditional towel - not every hostel will offer hot water, much less a towel :)

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