laundry

Travel Hack: Wash Your Clothes for Free While Traveling

One of the questions I inevitably get asked about traveling is how much clothes I bring along. Short answer: not much. At all. A few t shirts and a couple pairs of shorts mainly.

This is usually followed up by a second question: “So uhhh, do you wear the same clothes for days or weeks then?” Short answer: Yup. To me it’s part of the travel lifestyle. You’ll be too busy moving from place to place to have time to do loads of laundry most of the time. I try to stay as clean as possible, but sometimes it’s not feasible. At least it didn’t used to be… I discovered a compromise towards the end of my most recent long-term trip which will allow you to not only carry a minimal amount of clothing with you, but also not be quite so much of a dirty-skank-ass.

I can’t take credit for this travel hack. I read it on the website of a fellow blogger, but alas, his name and site escape me. Usually I like to give a shout-out for these types of things. But, I digress…

The answer to your skanky-woes is simple: Kill two birds with one stone. Or, erm, one shower.

That’s right—the shower. When I’m traveling in hostels or hotel rooms, I just wash the clothes I happen to be wearing that day (using a little dab of laundry detergent or some shampoo and a small brush) when I start my shower. After they’re good and scrubbed, I wring them out as best as I possibly can and hang them from the shower rod. When I’m done in the shower I find a good place to hang them up and viola! By the next morning they’re usually dry and ready to throw back in with the clean clothes.

If you’re Traveling on an Extreme budget, you’re going to have an even harder time doing laundry. I usually washed all of my clothes in creeks or rivers when I had the chance. Same thing, set them out somewhere to dry. I once made the mistake of washing clothes in the ocean, but I wouldn’t recommend that. I ended up with some pretty salty clothes that felt very uncomfortable once they dried out!

Let’s also keep mind another benefit of doing laundry this way—You’ll save money! My favorite.

Do you have any tips for readers when it comes to their dirty laundry? Let me know in the comments!

Peace and happy travels,

-Tom

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