Laundry happens – when you pack for carry-on

Tromp, swish, rinse, squeeze. I learned the laundry dance in a Malaysian bathtub, up to my ankles in soapy bubbles and my kids’ dirty clothes. When you’re traveling for more than a week, getting your clothes clean often requires a different skill set than at home.

Just like death and taxes, laundry is inevitable – it doesn’t take a holiday when you do. (Well, unless you’re vacationing au naturel in a nudist resort.)

Over our traveling years, we’ve honed our laundry skills – not just washing and drying but also packing, and flexing our attitude. Those skills continue to be useful now that we’re living in Portugal, where most people, including us, don’t have dryers.

Here’s what we’ve learned over the years.

The packing-laundry pact

We generally fly with carry-on sized backpacks (no checked luggage), even for multi-week trips, and always pack laundry sheets.

Laundry while travelling, especially for air travel, is directly related to what you pack, how much you pack, what you pack it in, and where it goes on the airplane.

If you fly carry-on only, you’ll likely have to do laundry. Conversely, if you fill a huge suitcase or two with 14 complete outfits, you’ll wait at the baggage carousel, but you won’t waste time rinsing your delicates. Where you end up on that scale affects your laundry strategy. Years ago, I actually owned and used a travel iron! Gasp! But as our travel experience has grown, we’ve packed less and less.

Our strategy: even for multi-week trips, we pack enough clothes for four days and plan to do laundry. The bonus: we can fly with just carry-on bags. (We use carry-on sized backpacks, not rollie bags, so we can more easily traverse the cobblestones, stairs and hills that make European towns so picturesque.)

Even Portuguese lighthouse keepers hang their laundry outside.

Here are my packing-laundry tips:

• Bring fewer clothes, but make sure they mix and match, and also resist wrinkles.
• Bring quick-dry clothes. Denim and other cottons take longer to dry, even if you have a dryer.
• Re-wear pants and shirts before laundering. Wash when they fail the sniff test. The longer you travel, the more you can tolerate less-than-fresh clothes!
• When you’re packing your bag mid-trip, it can sometimes be hard to tell the dirties from clean. Turn dirty clothes inside out so you can quickly tell the difference.

And here are my recommended laundry supplies to pack:

• Detergent sheets are the basic requirement: they take up very little space, don’t count as a liquid, and will save you time trying to buy detergent that you like. (I can’t tolerate fragrance, so I bring unscented.) That’s all you really need.
• If you’re going to be camping or hiking, take biodegradable Camp Suds, but it’ll count as a liquid.
• Handy options are a thin light rope for a laundry line and a flat sink stopper that fits over any sized drain. Alternatively, you can plug the drain with a rolled-up sock or make your own sink stopper by cutting a circle out of heavy plastic or vinyl; I made one from a cheap vinyl placemat.
• Forget the mesh bags, scrubby bags, dryer sheets, inflatable hangers, clothes pins, stain pens, scrubber pads and (ridiculous) travel iron – they just take up space and add weight.

Washing methods

This sculpture (as well as the mural, top photo in story) in the Portuguese village of Nadadouro pays tribute to the local washerwomen (lavadeiras) who used to launder clothes in the river.

On the Fijian island of Taveuni, we bounced over rough roads in the back of a pickup truck, then crossed a bridge, below which were women washing laundry while balanced on rocks at the river’s edge. Their little kids grinned and waved, so we returned the greeting. I didn’t take a photo, because the scene seemed strangely intimate and I didn’t want to intrude.

You likely won’t have to (and shouldn’t) do laundry in a river, but I highly recommend mastering the same techniques for hand washing in the bathroom or kitchen sink of your accommodations.

Here’s where our packed laundry supplies come into use. We usually wash underwear, socks and t-shirts by hand in the sink, although I’ve certainly done larger loads in the bathtub when we travelled with our three kids (now all adults). Hand washing is pretty simple:

• Fill a sink with water of whatever temperature you want.
• Add your laundry detergent sheet (or liquid) and the clothes.
• Use your hands to mimic the agitator of a washing machine. Swish and squeeze the clothes. Use some extra detergent on stains or smelly bits. Let them soak. Swish some more.
• Let the water out. Run fresh water and rinse the clothes well.
• Wring out the clothes as tightly as possible, then roll each item in a towel and squeeze to remove as much moisture as possible.

The washing machines in this Porto laundromat automatically dispensed ecological detergent, enzymatic detergent, disinfectant and softener. It also dispensed helpful tips such as “Don’t forget to empty your pockets” and “Turn jeans and colored clothes inside out” in English and Portuguese.

Better yet, book accommodations with a washing machine. Some apartments supply detergent but not all, so we bring our own. 

If you don’t have access to a washing machine, or you have a big load to do, or time is of the essence, find a laundromat. (In the Portuguese city of Porto, A Lavandeira was reportedly the first self-service laundromat in the country in 2013. Since then, they’ve blossomed all over.)

How laundromat washers work varies by country. You may have to use your favourite translation device to figure out the instructions…but not in Portugal, where instructions are usually posted in English as well as Portuguese.

An Alcobaça laundromat near us has instructions on the pay machine in English. You can pay with cash or card. “Lavagem” means “washing.” 

Here’s our experience with Portuguese laundromats:

• You often pay at a central machine that takes cash as well as cards. No need to save coins.
• Detergent is automatically dispensed, so you don’t need your own. 
• Washers and dryers can often be found inside grocery stores or in booths in the parking lot. We’ve also seen them at gas stations.

I can’t comment on using laundry services in hotels or resorts or on cruise ships because we’ve never used them; they’re expensive. I have, however, used hotel room laundry bags to carry our clothes to a laundromat or to pack wet stuff.

So now your clothes are clean, but still wet. On to the next step: drying. Here’s where the fun begins.   

Drying methods

A striped shirt – belonging to a Venetian gondolier? – hangs on a line on Burano (an island in the Venetian Lagoon).

In Mexico or Costa Rica (I forget exactly where), we used an inexpensive village laundry service. I arrived early for pick-up and found our clothes still laid out over bushes to dry. Even laundry services don’t always have dryers other than the sun.

I would venture a guess that most of the world hangs its laundry to dry in the sun – the ultimate climate-friendly laundry service. Certainly, our traveling clothes have hung on a variety of drying devices – the aforementioned shrubbery, door knobs, tops of open doors, open windows, shower bars, taps, towel racks, patio chairs and tables, a fire escape just outside our hotel window, lamps, railings, and even actual laundry racks and lines.   

Generally, washing laundry is easy; it’s the drying that’s the tricky part, mostly due to time and weather.

While cycling the Camino in 2019, we stayed in a hostel-like monastery dorm that had a washing machine but no dryer. We draped our clothes over our handy-dandy lightweight rope.

If you have access to a dryer, your clothes will likely dry faster than hanging them. But not always. Dryers in Europe, for example, are the condenser style – not the same as vented dryers that are the norm in Canada. With condenser dryers, you have to empty the water compartment, and they take about three hours to dry a load that would take 40 minutes in a vented dryer. Lightweight clothing will dry in an hour if hung in the hot sun with a breeze. So, dryers aren’t always faster.

Here are our tips for hanging clothes to dry:

• Outside in the sun and a breeze is best. Apartment-style accommodations sometimes have a rack or laundry line outside. Fancy hotels frown on hanging laundry where it can be seen by others.
• Hanging inside can be better if it’s raining or really humid. Air conditioning or a dehumidifier will speed things up, since they remove moisture from the air and your clothing at the same time.
• If you don’t have access to a line, use the lightweight rope you remembered to pack. String it between any sturdy knobs or handles or furniture.
• Make sure any drips don’t damage surfaces.

While cat-sitting in Verona, Italy, we hung our clothes on a rack hanging off the balcony railing – over a drop of five storeys. I hung onto the clothes tightly and added extra clothes pins! I wasn’t sure how to get into that courtyard to retrieve them if I’d dropped them.

Sometimes the laundry line is in a spot that’s risky for losing your laundry – in a stiff breeze, over a steep drop, over a street or canal (e.g. in Venice!), or on a boat. When we were on a small-boat tour of the Galapagos, we quickly learned how to loop our t-shirts, underwear and bathing suits onto the clothes line so they wouldn’t end up in the ocean.

Here are some tips to ensure your clothes don’t fly off the line:

• Use extra clothes pins.
• Before stringing up your lightweight rope, double it over on itself, and twist it tightly. Then, slip your clothes between the twists. You can buy already twisted laundry lines, but it’s easy enough to make your own.
• Loop any clothing with holes or straps or openings around the clothes line.
• Before stringing up your clothes line, run it straight through armholes or pant legs or straps.

You must be confident in your skills before hanging laundry over a Venetian canal.

Here are some final tips about timing your laundry adventures:

• Do your laundry as soon as you arrive at your accommodation, to allow enough drying time. Don’t do it just before you leave or you’ll be packing damp clothes.
• Clothes dry faster under an air conditioner or fan, near a heater, in a bathroom with the fan going, or near a dehumidifier.
• If something hasn’t dried in time, use the hotel hair dryer on it.

Communal laundry

We cycled by a Portuguese lavadouro by the side of the road – a communal wash station that appeared to still be in use in 2019.

Here’s a scenario that I imagine happened many times over, before Portuguese people had running water in their homes: an older lady (let’s call her Maria) has a sore back from bending over to scrub her husband’s work clothes in the river. “João, when you’re piping water to that new fountain, maybe you could add a pipe into a concrete tub. And add a roof overtop while you’re at it. Por favor.”

Cá está! A communal wash house, called a lavadouro.

We’ve seen them all over Portugal. Most appear now to be historical landmarks in their villages and towns, but some are still active. We saw women washing mats at one and others still have running water when you turn on the taps.

Beautiful tiles show women using the concrete sinks and washboards in a lavadouro in the village of Vestiaria.  

Most have a red-tiled roof above, are open on one or more sides, and have large concrete tubs and water taps. Some even have built-in concrete washboards, which would wreak havoc on delicates, but would help Maria clean João’s denim work pants. 

What a step up from standing in rivers, bent double to rub and beat out stubborn stains with harsh lye soap! The lavadouro would have been a big help to poorer women who earned money by doing laundry for richer families.

The lavadouros were also a gathering place for women (and let’s face it, it was usually women who did laundry) to gossip, sing, learn from each other, trade recipes and share wisdom. It all sounds much more jolly than it actually was, I’ll bet. Bent double in a river or leaning over those concrete tubs, it was hard work.  

Laundry while living in Portugal

Our winter drying strategy: we hang our clothes in our bathroom, with the dehumidifier to help remove damp air.

Since moving to Portugal in 2022, we’ve learned that doing laundry is different than our decades of Canadian experience taught us.

Take hanging laundry, for example. Eco-conscious Canadians might hang laundry in their back yards, but never in front yards. And some municipalities have banned laundry lines entirely – too unsightly. Most people use vented dryers. But in Portugal, where most people don’t have dryers, no one is bothered in the least by hanging their tatty underwear and bras on lines mere inches from passers-by or flapping gaily from balconies for all to see. That’s the usual, not the exception.

Most Portuguese do have clothes washers, but they’re usually in the kitchen, sometimes on an enclosed balcony, but not in a basement laundry room.

Our neighbour’s clothes hang over a roof, where she has dropped clothes pins many times, but not clothes!

Our front-loading washing machine is in the kitchen; one knob has a coffee stain on it because it’s right below our espresso machine. We don’t have a dryer. Most of the year, we hang our laundry on a rack and a clothes line on our balcony. Clothes dry in a few hours.

In contrast to Canada’s very dry winter air, Portugal’s winters are quite humid, so we needed a winter clothes drying strategy. We place our laundry rack in our bathroom, hang the clothes, turn on the dehumidifier, and close the bathroom door to trap the dry air. Our clothes dry by the next morning.

Some of our expat friends have found other drying strategies:

• condenser dryers
• portable laundry rack with an electric hot-air blower, with a cover bag over top
• wash clothes at home but dry them at a laundromat

Most importantly, we’ve learned to pin items tightly, especially when it’s windy. Our upstairs neighbour had to rescue her bedsheet with a broom handle when it blew off her drying rack, got caught on an overhang and nearly fell onto moving cars three storeys below.

A flexible attitude

Laundry hanging in public is just part of the scenery in Europe.

One of my favourite laundry memories happened in Paris. We were desperate for clean clothes for our outing to Giverny, so got up at 6 a.m. and went to a laundromat. While our clothes tangoed in the washing machine, we explored the neighbourhood. Around the corner, we found vendors setting up at an outdoor market, piling peppers in pretty mounds and arranging bunches of tulips. Hardly anyone was there. Even though I am not a morning person, I was delighted! We bought cheese, paté, a baguette and apples for our picnic lunch later. After shifting our wet clothes into a dryer, we returned to the market, sat at a café, sipped coffees, and watched the neighbourhood awaken.

I remember the delights of that early morning because it caused an attitude shift within me. I realized that doing laundry while travelling forced us to slow down. And slower travel is almost always better. If I must drink a glass of crisp Prosecco in a Rome café while waiting for my undies to dry – what’s the matter with that? It lets me take a relaxing breath, watch the world go by, and observe people. It’s a cultural learning experience.       

In Portugal no one blinks an eye when encountering laundry hanging to dry along the street. I’ve never seen this in Canada.

We had a similar experience in Porto, Portugal. While our clothes had fun on their day off at a lavandaria (laundromat), we wandered the neighbourhood and found a restaurant that clearly catered to local workmen. We ordered feijoada – a bean and pork stew – that was amongst the best meals we’d had in Portugal. My mouth waters just remembering that meal.

Even if you opt to hang out with your dancing clothes in the laundromat, many have free wifi and some even have book exchanges or TVs, so you’ll be entertained.

Now that we live in Portugal, my attitude about laundry has shifted even further away from my Canadian washer and vented dryer that let me remember at 9 p.m. that I needed clean clothes for the next day. Here, I must take drying time into account, which means paying attention to the weather, the season and the time of day before starting a load.

Strangely, I find hanging laundry rather therapeutic – untangling shirt sleeves from around tea towels, giving them a satisfying snap to straighten them out, pinning them on the line and feeling the sun on my back. It’s soothing. 

And one final note: I’m long over embarrassment at having my undies and bras hanging out for all to see. No one cares. Truly!

We’ve been hanging our laundry in Portugal since 2019, and around the world before that. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.