Coffee Cup Executive

Traveling can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a challenge when it comes to keeping your clothes clean. If you’re on a long trip or in a location where laundry facilities are scarce, you may need to find creative ways to wash your clothes. One option is to use a dry bag or Scubba Wash Bag to do your laundry.

Here’s how:

1. Gather your dirty laundry and separate it into smaller loads, if necessary. I generally don’t separate by colour because I travel with a monochromatic colour palette and only use cold water anyway, plus I store my dirty clothes in the Scrubba, which means I do laundry as soon as my bag is full-ish.
2. Fill the Scrubba with cold water and add a small amount of laundry detergent. I travel with laundry sheets that I have broken down into tiny manageable pieces. I prefer unscented but it takes some getting used to if you equate clean clothes with “fresh alpine scent.”
3. Place a small load of laundry into the dry bag and seal it tightly. This is important because you need some space for the clothes to move around so you can scrub them on the internal washboard.
4. Agitate the dry bag to allow the water and detergent to circulate and clean the clothes. You can do this by rolling the bag around, squishing it with your hands, or gently shaking it. I do this on a towel because I always end up soaking the outside of the bag when I fill it.
5. Rinse the clothes by adding fresh water to the dry bag and agitating it again.
6. Repeat the washing and rinsing process until all of your laundry has been cleaned. The Scrubba bag comes with instructions to tell you how many times to do this. My “science” is to keep rinsing and agitating until the water runs clear.
7. Use a towel to roll the clothes and remove excess water and then lay them flat to dry, or invest in a tiny little laundry line like this one that has an internal pegging system.

I’ll confess that this was initially the most expensive laundry I had ever done, but the more I travel, the more this pays for itself. In some hostels, it costs 8€ just to wash your clothes, plus another 8€ to dry. When you are a minimalist packer, it’s outrageous to pay 16€ to wash five shirts and two pairs of shorts. I now have a very good system in place and even have the mini Scrubba for when I’m travelling to a hotel where I just need to deal with my Knix undergarments. And I can wash anything I want any time I want for no cost.

So next time you’re on the road and need to do some laundry, don’t worry! With a dry bag and a little elbow grease, you can keep your clothes clean and fresh no matter where your travels take you.