Two weeks ago Angela and I found ourselves (gasp!) at a campground. We needed to do laundry, dump the tanks, fill with fresh water, and charge our myriad of devices before heading into Canada.
As a rule, we always skip the country with clean clothes and “fullempty” tanks. An expression borrowed from our good friend Angela Klinger, “fullempty” is pronounced, “full-UM-tee”. Fullempty is when you have full fresh, empty grey, and empty black. All the cool RVers talk this way now. You’re down, right?
Anyway, the campground had an odd requirement that we couldn’t do our laundry until 4:00pm. Then it turned out there was only one mid-90’s era residential washing machine, and two equally antique dryers. Fortunately, we had the facility to ourselves.
Once it got going, the washing machine practically walked itself across the border. This attempted defection was particularly humorous as the laundry room was placed between two guest suites. Once can only imagine what they thought was going on.
The ancient dryers were of the coal burning furnace variety. Between the heat and steam they generated, these hot boxes could quite possibly power a locomotive. And yet, they took forever to actually dry anything. Go figure.
As Angela and I baked in this land of the lost laundry cave, we discussed whether we should buy more clothing to stretch our clothes cleaning cycle out another week. As it is now, we need to do laundry every ten days or so. Beyond that, and we’re wearing yesterday’s socks – or worse.
This week’s Question of the Week is a question and a poll. It’s time to find out how many days worth of clothing you pack, where you typically do laundry on the road, and any other laundry extension tips, tricks and techniques.
Do you wash clothes with a portable contraption? What tips do you have for doing laundry on the road? Do you dry clothes in your camper or on a clothes line outside? Do you wear the same clothes until somebody desperately says something, or passes out from your odiferous aroma? What’s your laundry trick?
This question should only be answered by folks who go truck camping for extended periods of time – at least three weeks, or more. If you go camping for a week or less and return home, you probably just use your home washer and dryer.
This QOTW is now closed and some of the responses are just hysterical. Click here to read, “How To Do Laundry On The Road“.
