Vanlife Laundry: A Laundry List of Clothes Cleaning Hacks
People get very concerned about the logistics of van life hygiene. “Where do you shower? What about going to the bathroom?? Do you even wash your clothes?!”
Indeed we do (just not often).
Since moving into the van, we do laundry, at most, once a month. The longest we’ve gone is 7 weeks. Call us dirtbags, but it’s pretty great. Possibly even better than sweatpants freshly pulled from the dryer.
Sure, washing your entire wardrobe in one go is a pretty big chore, but we still find it saves us so much time (not to mention money).
It also saves our clothes. Did you know that the biggest contributor to clothing wear and tear is washing and (especially) drying. Check the lint trap each time you run your dryer is you don’t believe us. All that lint is coming from your clothes! So by reducing the amount of times you wash your clothes, the more life you’re getting out of them. In turn, that helps reduce textile waste, which is a huge contributor to global pollution.
But how do you actually pull off doing laundry so infrequently? Considering most people (pre-vanlife us included) do multiple loads of laundry at least once a week, it’s a pretty big switch to make. Here are some things that helped us:
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Tips for reducing how often you have to laundry:
Rewear things! Change your mentality that “one wear = dirty”. While this certainly CAN be true, more than often it’s not. Treat every article of clothing (except maybe underwear) like your favorite pair of jeans. I get about a week out of a pair of pants before they get truly dirty enough to merit a washing. You can start slowly by just repeating an items wear by one day, until you mentally redefine what dirty laundry means. It’s helpful if you get yourself used to this as part of your vanlife preparation.
Have a set of active clothes and a set of casual clothes. As climbers, spend a lot of getting our clothes dirty, sweaty, and chalky. Obviously, those clothes feel grosser a lot faster. Fortunately, that doesn’t really matter when we’re out climbing (especially since no one can smell us out there). That’s why we keep our active clothes separate from our casual clothes.
Change your clothes when you shower. Nothing feels worse than putting five days of dirt on freshly scrubbed skin. Try to time your weekly outfit swaps with your showers. That way, you’re not dirtying a clean pair of clothes with your dirty body or vice versa.
Tank tops > t-shirts. T-shirts live in close quarters with your pits and they get to smelling like B.O. a LOT faster than tank tops, which don’t actually touch your pits.
Switch to natural deodorant. Aside from all the harmful toxins and phthalates in synthetic deodorants, they also stain the pits of your clothing horribly. Natural deodorants are way easier on the clothes and your body. We use Meow Meow Tweet’s all natural zero waste deodorant cream. Just note: If your body is used to synthetic deodorant, you need to do a detox first to allow your pores to clear, during which you’ll get a little smelly because you really shouldn’t wear ANY deodorant. This detox can take up to three weeks so time it to when you may have more frequent shower access. To speed it up and reduce sweating a bit, this simple clay-based detox bar is great.
Wear your birthday suit when you can. Hanging out in your van in the middle of the desert with no one around? Who says you even have to wear clothes then! Embrace the feeling of au naturale. It’s freeing and you won’t be dirtying clothes unnecessarily.
A look at our minimalist laundry supplies:
As with every other aspect of vanlife, laundry supply storage is limited. But here’s a tip: you don’t actually need three different kinds of detergent. To some extend, soap is soap.
Forget the fabric softener! If you’ve ever taken the time to read the fabric care tags on your clothes, you’ll find lots of them suggest NOT even using it. If you really notice the different, just consider getting a detergent that has built-in fabric softener (at our house, we used to use ECOS plant-based all-in-one detergent and softener).
Nowadays, here’s what our laundry supply stock looks like:
Detergent Paper: When we first moved into the van, I kept a glass jar of bulk laundry powder in the van. But I recently discovered these amazing little things called laundry detergent strips. They’re AMAZING. They take up hardly any space, are extremely portable and travel friendly, and easy to use. Just load a machine, toss in the strip, and hit wash. They’re also totally non-toxic, biodegradable, and eco-friendly.
Laundry Stain Remover Bar: As great as the detergent papers are at getting clothes generally clean, they definitely don’t have a lot of stain lifting power. These zero waste laundry soap bars are a good pairing to the detergent papers. Just rub it on a stain before you toss it in the hamper or washing machine. And they store easily in something as simple as a paper bag.
Tide To-Go pen: For really bad stains, we also keep one of these around. They take up no space but are handy to have in a pinch.
Sea to Summit Trek & Travel Laundry Wash: We keep this around for the occasions where we find ourselves hand washing items in between laundry days (like if we run out of underwear a little early). The detergent papers are excessive for single or small batch items; a small dollop of this is stuff is all you need. These are also biodegradable and pair well with hand washing laundry systems. An even more natural alternative is Dr. Bronner’s pure castille soap, which we plan on switching to one our current stock is gone.
Nikwax Tech Wash: Because we own a lot of relatively expensive, technical gear that requires more specific cleaning, we keep a small bottle of this around. That way, on the occasion that we need to wash our down outerwear or waterproof fabrics, we can do it safely without damaging the integrity of the fabrics.
3 ways to laundry when you live on road
So you’ve reduced how often you need to do laundry, but you can’t put it off forever. How do you actually do laundry when you live in a camper van or RV (assuming you don’t have a washing machine for the latter)?
1. Camper Van Clothes Washing by Hand
Image Courtesy of Scrubba
Portable wash bag: The Scrubba Wash Bag (they have a few different models depending on size and durability) is best camera van laundry system that you’ll typically see. It’s a pretty simple concept: Just load your clothes in the waterproof bag, add some detergent and water, seal it shut, and shake. The dump the soapy water and repeat with fresh water until your clothes are soap free.
Portable camper van sink: Similar to the above, but requires you to get your own hands a little soapy. Just fill any basin with soap and water and hand scrub your clothes. This is what we use if we need any articles in between laundromat trips. In particular, we use the Sea to Summit 20L portable camp sink, which is easy to fill with water and pack back to camp. The wide mouth basin allows for plenty of elbow room when washing.
NOTE: If using either of these methods in the wild, it is SO IMPORTANT to use biodegradable (i.e. earth safe soaps that won’t contaminate the earth) and to not wash in any wild waterway. Dump your soapy water at least 200 feet away from any water to prevent damaging fragile marine ecosystems.
Find the Sea to Summit Portable Sink here: Sea to Summit / Backcountry / REI / Amazon / Moosejaw
Find other camp sinks here: Amazon
Find biodegradable camp soap here: Sea to Summit / REI / Amazon
Public sinks: Not ideal (because you may get some funny looks) but definitely does in a pinch if you just really need some hot, running water to get something clean.
In a pinch between washes, we use Sea to Summit Trek & Travel Laundry Wash and Sea to Summit 20L portable camp sink to wash. Just remember to #LeaveNoTrace.
2) Laundromats
Laundromats are probably the best, most consistent way to wash clothes if you live on the road. Laundromats are everywhere, even the smallest of town.
However, no one said they were flawless. In fact, laundromats can be downright hellish.
Here are a few tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way to successful laundromat laundering.
Avoid the weekends. That’s when normal, working stiffs wash their clothes so you’ll likely have to fight for machines. Midday throughout the week is the best time for free machines.
ALWAYS use the commercial washers. Front load washers are easier on your clothes because clothes don’t get wrapped up in the agitator and they’re less likely to get detergent stains. Plus they hold more so the extra cost fo commercial washer is well worth it.
Don’t buy the vending machine detergent. Talk about overpaying for tiny amounts of detergent. Sure, it’s convenient because you don’t have to store laundry materials, but again… detergent papers.
Take a paper towel or wash cloth to the washer first. You don’t what’s been in that washer before you. Typically it’s just detergent residue, but that can be pretty harmful to your clothes. Just a quick wipe first may save you a lot of hassle later.
Separate washers, same dryer. Laundromat dryers are at least twice the size of the washers so you can likely cram all your loads into one or two dryers to save on dryer costs.
Pull fast drying clothes out of the dryer as you go. When you load dryers full, things take longer to dry. But, if you pull out things that dry faster as the dryer runs, you’ll free up tumble space for thicker things to dry better, faster. Another way to save some dryer cost. Plus, then you can fold those things while the rest dries, reducing the overall time you have to spend there.
If something goes wrong, speak up! Laundromat machines are far from infallible, as indicated by the fact that half of them seem to be perpetually out of order. Even working machines can be a bit of a roulette. For example: We try to wash our socks and underwear in hot water (everything else in cold because it’s easier on fabric and energy consumption). But for things that get extra bacterial and stinky, we want a true disinfecting wash. Once the machine we chose apparently didn’t get hot, even after we selected a hot wash, so everything came out still vaguely smelly. We just brought it to the attention of the attendant and she gave us unlimited free dry time. You don’t have to raise a stink about these little hiccups, but if you’re polite, people will generally go a long ways to help you out.
3) Friends and Family
The saviors of van lifers! We’ll push laundry day extra long if we know we’re going to be in the welcome embrace of friends with a washing machine. Laundromats don’t have to be terrible, but they’re rarely ever pleasant.
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