A few year ago, my family and I took an extended (10-day) vacation. Since of course we can’t pack enough clothes for 10 days (last time we traveled by plane we had SEVENTEEN pieces of luggage!), we knew we’d have to do laundry on the trip. With a family of 8, we generate a LOT of laundry – we have 2 washers and 2 dryers at home and typically do about 6 loads of laundry a week.
As we look back on what worked and what didn’t work, I thought I’d share 4 laundry hacks for others who find themselves in the same situation
1. Plan laundry days in advance
We tried to do this, but didn’t do as good of a job as we could. As you plan out your itinerary, make sure to keep an eye on when you’re going to need laundry, and make sure that you’ll be somewhere you can do it.
For our trip, we packed everyone 3 outfits (plus the one they started out wearing). So we knew that every 3 days or so, we’d need to make a laundry stop. The problem that we ran into is that we were changing hotels (and cities!) every day, so you either have to squeeze in laundry early in the day (before checking out), or get to our new hotel in time to do laundry at night (which is hard to do if you’ve got a full day of travel)
2. Make your lodging stays wisely
One of the best laundry hacks is to make sure that at least some of the places that you’re staying have on-site laundry, or easy access to a laundromat. Really you just need them on your planned laundry days (you DID read hack #1, right?)
When I asked on Twitter, Carrie from Freakin Flyers, a full-time traveler, joked:
@PointsWithACrew But I’ve always thought that CouchSurfing should have an option for “I don’t need your couch, just your washing machine!”
— Freakin Flyers (@FreakinFlyers) June 16, 2015
In the US at least, most chain hotels will have on-site laundry. But if you’re staying in other countries, or in boutique hotels, you may not have easy access to laundry
3. Bring your own supplies (and cash!)
Most laundromats (and hotel on-site laundries) will have detergent and fabric softener available for purchase, but you’ll save a ton of money if you bring your own supplies. We actually forgot to bring ours and ended up buying some at the store instead of paying for it at the laundromat.
When I asked my wife, she suggested it would probably have been better to spend a little more and get some of the capsule-style detergent (like Tide pods), since it would be self-contained and less likely to spill.
And of course, you’ll need cash! Most hotels will be able to give you quarters for dollars, but fewer will be able to give you quarters on your credit card.
4. If you have to, prioritize what gets washed
Sometimes, despite all your best efforts, you won’t be able to do laundry as often as you would if you were at home. In that case, you’ll have to prioritize what gets washed.
Pajamas, jeans or other pants aren’t as important to get washed as say, socks and underwear. Sure, in an ideal world, you’d wash everything, but when you only have enough cash or enough time to do one load of laundry, you need to prioritize! If you’re stuck hand washing clothes in your hotel sink with a bar of soap, certain articles of clothing (ahem) are more important to be clean than others!
Hopefully these 4 laundry hacks have helped you – if you have more laundry hacks to share – let us know in the comments!
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Oo the capsules are a good idea. We just use bar soap from the hotel honestly!
Do you use the bar soap in a washing machine? How does that work? Or are you just talking about hand washing?
Must be hand washing which we do all the time. On our last trip though, one of the Marriott hotels had laundry and it was free. made my wife happy who then put in laundry while we had breakfast.
The pods are very good. You can also use them to wash out stuff in a sink if needed.
I just think it’s odd that you have 2 washers and dryers yet only do 6 loads a week. That’s not even a load every day. We are a family of 4 and do about 6 loads a week. Granted they are smaller loads but when you properly divide your laundry into towels, sheets, whites, darks, colors and underwear that’s 6 loads a week.
I would think you’d easily do twice as many loads as most families.
How do you only do 6 loads? That’s incredible. Do you all share one towel and turn your underwear inside out to get an extra day out of them? Lol.
I’d say we do 2-3 loads of laundry 2-3 times a week. So maybe it’s a bit more than 6 a week? I would say that we typically divide into colors and whites. Actually one of our washers and one of our dryers currently is not working
Lindy,
I find it “odd” that you care how many washers/dryers the OP has. The point of the post was to help you find ways to do laundry while on the road. Who cares if someone has 1 washer or 5 in their home.
Candlewood Suites has free use of washers and dryers.
another thought: have seen indications that some hotels, esp. extended stay brands like Candlewood or Staybridge, will offer complimentary use of their on-site laundry machines to guests…. Is that rare or common in your experience? Will check for upcoming Aug. travel.
I will have to check that. We were scheduled to stay in both a Homewood Suites and a Candlewood Suites on our most recent trip, but both of the reservations fell through (for different reasons)
Staybridge Suites, MainStay Suites and Home2 Suites by Hilton all have on site complimentary laundry.
I too use laundry pods, however I like ones that do not include liquid. I typically travel with Seventh Generation or Honest Company brands in a sealed food container from Sistema (target.com). Nothing explodes if in checked bag and no need to worry about liquids if you want to do carryon.
The amount of money to be made if one opened a laundromat chain in South America or Europe would be amazing.
I wonder if pods do not leak up on the air? Are they O.K. based on your experience?
I would add another, 5. Pack all “colors”.
We avoid bringing “whites”, so that we can combine everything and be more efficient with our loads.
My #5 is similar to some of the other suggestions, it would be: stay at a rental property or a hotel that has free or low cost laundry. If you’re not staying there the whole time then just plan a 1-2 night stay on your strategic days. When booking hotels, check out the packages section – you just might find one that includes laundry for minimal cost (I’ve seen this more often in Asia and have checked in for a 2-3 night weekend stay using rates that included free laundry and other benefits like meal discounts for not much more than the standard rate. It’s great giving them a suitcase full of laundry and having it returned all clean and freshly pressed. They even shine your shoes.) These packages are typically called extended stay or value stay packages. Finally, if you’d rather spend time vacationing then doing laundry, a lot of laundromats will do it for you at a small upcharge – I’ve done this in Asia and Europe. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $30 for 2-4 people.
Bonus tip that I actually used last month – we were at a rental property that had a washer and dryer, but I had packed in a hurry and forgotten our Tide pods. Since we flew to our destination on a discount carrier and our 1 checked bag was already near the limit, I didn’t want to buy anything expensive that I’d want to keep and take back (thereby adding weight). Then I remembered that dollar stores have detergent and as luck would have it, there was one located across the street. So I bought a 6-load bottle of Tide Simply Clean and a package of Bounce sheets…for $2. We did 3-4 small loads…and left the rest for the next renter.
I love paying it forward at a rental place. So nice to arrive somewhere and find that there’s salt/pepper, sugar, laundry dtgt and the like from previous renters. Use what you need and then leave something for the next people. Makes me feel part of a community of people I’ll never meet.
I always prioritize by what I need washed first. It’s easy to get lazy on laundry day so the sooner I do things that I need, the better off I am in case I don’t finish all of my loads. Thanks for the great tips!
I’ve traveled all over the US and Canada by car. We always do laundry every 3 or 4 days. We always did laundry in the middle of a travel day. We would stop at a grocery store pick up fixings for lunch. Head to the laundromat get our clothes in the washer. Eat lunch while the clothes are washing. Then get them dried and get back on the road.
If you are camping most laundromats in the west also have showers so you can get clean while your clothes are being washed and dried. They have a small charge to take a shower.
When traveling abroad we’ve gotten back hotel laundry that was pressed. And the cost was $25 per load. Because pressed. They basically ironed EVERYTHING include toddler pajamas, which clearly don’t need ironing. So if you do have a hotel do your laundry, ask for no ironing!
That is pretty ridiculous. I remember when we were at the Conrad Singapore earlier this year we thought the laundry pricing chart was over the top crazy. I remember it was like $3-4 for a pair of underwear(!) I was having a hard time seeing a scenario where I or almost anyone I know would ever use that 🙂
We try to plan ahead and find a few nearby laundromats to the motel we will be at. We probably do 5-6 loads at a time and in my limited experience, many motels will only have 1-2 washers/dryers so it takes several load cycles to get our laundry done.
Save your money! Many locations have local laundries. In Cabo San Lucas, there is a local laundry 2 blocks walking distance from the Pueblo Bonito Rose where you drop off your laundry, (i.e. 2 full loads), they launder, fold and have ready in about 4 hours for $5 with generous tip. You can usually ask a local person or sometimes find on local travel sites.
This is probably not a hack, but when traveling to accommodation where there is no guest laundry and the laundry service hours don’t suit me, I recommend investing in a Scrubba (I’m a carry on only travelled). Pair that with a couple of sheets of Dissolvz or similar laundry soap sheets and 4 plastic clothes pegs, and you’re good for a couple of weeks at least. To dry wring out clothes, roll them up in a clean towel and walk on them. Hang up and they should be dry in a few hours – I do this before bed and I’ve got clean and dry clothes in the morning. Unfortunately they still need to be ironed.
+1 on using the Scrubba! Not only can you wash a few things any evening you want so that they are dry the next morning (gotta love that towel trick!), but the Scrubba is also perfect for CARRYING your dirty clothes since it seals and you aren’t carrying around stinky clothes that smell up everything else in your suitcase! If I’m traveling and something does double-duty like that, then it wins!
Suggestion–when in large city like San Francisco, use Laundry Locker, good service, reasonable prices.
Hotel shampoo works 10 times better than a soap bar.
I pack a couple of gallon-size and quart-size freezer bags, many uses and take up no space. I can get 2 shirts, underwear and socks in a gallon freezer bag. Add water and a few drops of conditioning shampoo (no need for fabric softener), then seal and shake, rinse and wring. I’ve found that some hotel sink plugs don’t seal well, so the bag is my insurance if that’s the case. Then shake them out and, like Hendrik stated above, roll them up in a bath towel to absorb as much water as possible. Hang them up and use a hair dryer for a few minutes while wet or still damp to get wrinkles out, less hassle than ironing. It takes maybe 10 minutes before bed or in the morning to do this, and no need to pack a separate laundry product. Jeans/pants take longer to dry, but except on rare occasions, I only spot-wash those if needed. My longest trip was 2 weeks in Europe and did it easily on 3 changes of daily clothes and 2 changes of running clothes. I never felt that I needed to pack more using this method.
I do like the idea of the laundry soap sheets in case machine washing might be needed away from home. Thank you for the tip, I’ll check those out!
I was just in Las Vegas for a trade show. On our last day of the trade show, I headed off to the laundromat bright and early and discovered that they could wash and fold my laundry for $1/pound and for a couple extra dollars wash in separate colors. Rather than waste a couple hours, we decided it was worth our money. We also gave the young man a decent tip when we picked it up on our way back to the condo / hotel. We spent $20 with tip and thought it was a bargain compared to the resort pricing and got in a couple extra sights too.
If anyone’s going to Spain you can leave your detergent at home. All the washers in coin laundries there have automatic detergent dispensing, most also include fabric softener. FYI.
Great comments by all. Especially the gallon bag for washing.