Doing laundry on the road

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
jymbee

jymbee

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 20, 2018
Posts
3,600
Location
Upstate NY
For the most part we can keep up with laundry with our Splendide washer/dryer combo. Great little unit. But on extended trips after awhile we look for a commercial laundromat to wash the bulkier items such as sheets, heavy towels, blankets etc.

In the years we've been traveling we've come across quite a variety of laundromats. From downright skanky with ancient washers & dryers many of which being out of operation and no attendant anywhere, to modern spotless facilities with a variety of machines for loads of just about any size-- and a helpful attentive attendant to boot.

So, if you're looking for a laundromat in an unfamiliar area with multiple choices, how do you decide? We've found the answer to be Google Maps & reviews. Find a site with Maps within a reasonable distance and read the reviews. If no reviews. Pass. If just a few good & bad, be suspicious. But if you find a place with dozens of reviews and almost all are very positive there's a good chance that's where you want to get clean!
 
one thing you might want to check out is the small compact "Twin tub" (some are single tub) washers. I got one after I moved into an apartment.. The one I have fits easily in my bathtub. and should fit in an RV shower.. Holds about six gallons of water (one water heater full in most RVs)
Id' fill it with the hand held shower (Actually that's how I fill it) and drain intothe shower pan (Tub in my case) I the line dry the cloths. IN my case an indoor cloths line. Holds one queen size sheet or one change of clothing.
Now the punch line... I do not know if it's because I use FULL HOT not 'WARM" or not but the first time I washed a load of whites in this thing the discharge was dang near black.. So I refilled with HOT, Soap and Bleach and ran it again.. This tie the discharge was more a light tan... And the Whites were WHITE!!!! Now I generally run mixed loads (White and color mixed) and color safe non-chlorine (oxi-clean) Bleach.. also a bit of Borax.. Use about 1/3 to 1/2 what they recommend for a top load. I'm really happy with it. First 150 dollar machine lasted about a year or about 150 worth of laundry. Second one is now over a year old.
I still do "Big" Loads (one a month) at a commercial place (The apartment laundry is ... a problem for multiple reasons.. I'm not the only resident of the complex who uses commercial instead. (Have met other residents at one of the laundromats I use) OH. and since I started adding 20 Muel Team Borax... I don't need fabric softener.. at all.
Hot wash. Spin Cold rinse, Spin. Hang to dry (normally that ends in stiff fabric even with Downy or Sunggle but with Borax.. VERY soft_ Borax goes in the wash)
 
I have not been on but a couple of long trips that I needed to do laundry, but the laundry facility that I was most impressed by is about five or six blocks from the entrance to the Spearfish City Campground in Spearfish SD. Whoever operated it really CARED and it was spotless clean, every machine appeared to be operable and I could not ask for anything nicer. And since it is located across the street from the Police Department, Its quite safe to hang around and read a book, surf the net on their wifi or just do nothing while waiting.

Spearfish Laundry & Dry Cleaning

Charles
 
Laundry equipment for our rig is a non-starter. No room, and no weight budget for it.
When I was working, I traveled a lot, and preferred finding a laundromat rather than sending it through the hotel laundry service, which could cost a month's worth of laundromat to do one change of clothes.
So, I'm perfectly comfortable around a laundromat, and have been to laundromats all over the world.
Beijing was probably the strangest one. Almost everybody in the placed stopped and watched me do my laundry.
And, We're not too proud to bring laundry over to family's house and borrow their laundry room.
We often check out the laundromat at the RV Park when we are staying for a few days. We've only been to a couple where we weren't comfy using the Park's Laundry.
We also will google for laundry drop-off places nearby., and drop laundry off when we are doing an errand day.
 
To locate laundry mats, we'd search out the internet and find the locations of the nearest ones. We'd then do a drive by each one and pick the one that appeared to be the most "worthy". We hated doing laundry this way.

When we got our fifth wheel, we decided to install a Splendid stackable unit a year later. It was the best thing we could have ever done.

After that, we use the washing machine as our cloths hamper. When it get's "full" we run the washer, throw it in the dryer, fold it, hang it, and put it away. When camping, we do a small load about every other day so the loads never get very big and overwhelming.

We always have access to a dump station and a water source. I have a Barker Blue sewer Tote for dumping and a 35 gallon fresh water portable tank for filling when we do not have those services available at the campsite. So, water and dumping is not an issue.

Now, oversized loads like blankets and pillows. Well, the only time we do blankets is when the dogs mess them up by accident, (from either end). We can usually spot clean those areas of the blankets using the kitchen sink and some Dawn Dishwashing liquid and then letting the blanket air dry. Most of the time, they dry pretty fast.

Other than using our washing machine at home, ever since we got the Splendid in our camper, we've not used a public laundry mat since. And sometimes we are on the road for 2 to 4 months at a time.
 
We tend to use RV park laundry rooms, in my experience they are often cheaper and cleaner feeling than most public laundromats.
 
Our first coach had a combo Splindide. It was a great little unit as long as we kept up… alas, we often didn’t and needed to find a decent laundromat. Have nothing to add to what’s been offered so far. Reviews and drive by inspection would be our basis.

We have a stacked washer and dryer in our current coach and keep up much better BUT, we still fall behind sometimes. And, though larger than our old combo unit, this current washer still doesn’t handle our king size blankets very well.

We often use a place that offers wash and fold service. The cost is most often about twice what we would’ve spent on the machines doing it ourselves or a little under. Laundry comes back folded beautifully (even folded sheets!). A very worthwhile timesaver IMO.

My favorite line when getting quarters from the park office for their laundry room: “I need to rent a roll of quarters, please.” If they own the machines, that’s EXACTLY what you’re doing.
 
I use Yelp. Half way decent reviews by locals, usually with pictures. We have a stacked washer and dryer in our rig, but we need hookups to use it. Hard to do when boondocking! Sometimes we pull into a campground with hookups strictly to do 2 weeks of laundry. It is generally about the same cost as taking that many clothes to the laundromat.
 
Onyrlef said:
... a dog is going to relieve itself on my bed once. ...
Click to expand...
It takes a little bit of patients, love, and understanding when they are puppies. When they get sick, especially when they are still puppies, it can't be helped either. They are too little to jump off the bed yet. Yes, "they" always sleep with us.
 
Onyrlef said:
I must be from another dimension, a dog is going to relieve itself on my bed once. After that you could drag that blanket behind an ocean going freighter from China to San Francisco and it still isn’t going on my bed.
Click to expand...
DutchmenSport said:
It takes a little bit of patients, love, and understanding when they are puppies. When they get sick, especially when they are still puppies, it can't be helped either. They are too little to jump off the bed yet. Yes, "they" always sleep with us.
Click to expand...
As an avid hunter, I have had bird dogs all my life. When they are puppies, they can occasionally sleep on the bed to get them socialized with the family but I make sure to get up in the middle of the night to take them out to do their thing. Most of the time they will sleep in a crate next to the bed until they're accustomed to being in the house and are house broken. After that, they sleep on the floor - usually in the laundry room on a pad of their own. The laundry room being the one with the linoleum floor and the one much easier to sweep Labrador hair off of. Labs shed like a snowstorm.
 
In our years of RV travels we have never had an onboard washer/dryer so have used a lot of laundromats. We found that either the RV park or a small town was usually to our liking.
 
Isaac-1 said:
We tend to use RV park laundry rooms, in my experience they are often cheaper and cleaner feeling than most public laundromats.
Click to expand...
And most of the people using them are seeking the same cleanliness that you are and don't abuse the facility.
I have seen people using public laundromats to wash filthy, greasy clothes and stuffing them full. We have one near us that actually has a full time attendant watching and cleaning.
 
Onyrlef said:
I must be from another dimension, a dog is going to relieve itself on my bed once. After that you could drag that blanket behind an ocean going freighter from China to San Francisco and it still isn’t going on my bed.
Click to expand...
Never raised children?
Never left a ‘wet spot’ on the sheets conceiving those children?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 444 (members: 8, guests: 436)

Forum statistics

Threads
132,319
Posts
1,393,499
Members
138,023
Latest member
MGD
Back
Top Bottom