with all of the covet restrictions and rving doing laundry has gotten a little bit more difficult
in this video we are going to show you a great way to be able to do laundry while you're on the road
and never step foot out of your rig we are charity ben dakota and trinity we decided we
didn't want to wait for a life of adventure so in 2017 we bought our first rv and set off to live a
life of travel in the usa we've visited over 38 states in three years and have many more to go
follow along to learn all the best places to see rv and travel tips and much more
hello and welcome back to the channel if you are not subscribed yet i would invite
you to do that right now just tap that little bell icon and that way you get notified every
single time that we release a new video in this video we're going to show you how we have been
100 self-contained this year even while doing laundry now there's pros and cons to this
so make sure to watch this video in its entirety because i'm gonna share both the pros in the cons
of doing laundry in your own rig so in our rig we have this splendid two in one washer dryer combo
so the way that this works is this is an all-in-one unit it washes the clothes and it
dries the clothes as well it's the splendid 2000 s and this was actually here in this rig when we
bought it from the previous owner now let me tell you a little story about rv life when the pandemic
first hit and we were at an rv park in arizona and i remember walking by the laundry area and seeing
some not so happy faces of people that were in the laundromat people that were outside of the laundry
area knocking on the windows telling people it was time for them to get out because they were
only allowing one person at a time due to covert restrictions that didn't look very fun to me and
i was glad that i never had to step foot inside of that laundry facility at the campground and we
were able to do everything we needed right in our own rig now that's not to say that i haven't done
laundry at rv parks because i have and i have a little bonus tip for you about doing laundry at
rv parks that i'll share a little bit later in the video now you might be wondering can you really
get all of your laundry done in a washer dryer that's this size and absolutely yes but there's
a couple of things that you need to know and a couple of things that you need to maybe adjust
about rv living if you haven't already done so here's a tip when we first started using this rig
for rv life i was still using the old style terry cloth type towels now if you're using those towels
two things they don't dry very well when you hang them up on a hook inside of your rig
and they take up a lot of space in this particular unit so i switched over to the microfiber
travel type towels these microfiber travel style towels are much thinner these work
great and when you hang them up in your rv to dry they dry very very quickly and the bonus thing is
is i can fit multiples of these towels in our washer dryer that's four towels
that are in there and i still have room for more laundry so i can wash
four of them in here before with the old terry cloth style towels i could only wash one at a time
with a few other bits of laundry so switching to these towels means i can do
pretty much all the laundry that we need to do here in the rig so these are from a company called
ventureforth and I'll make sure I put a link in the comments below but I have loved switching to
this thinner type towel for rv life not just for this but for also the fact that they dry faster
and they just work much better and take up way less space so people ask how long does it take
because everybody talks about oh it takes so long to do a load of wash now here's the thing it just
depends upon the setting that you're using on the dry time there's multiple options you can
go up to 120 minutes on your dry time or you can do as little as 30 minutes on your dry time
you also have options for like a super cycle a normal cycle or a delicate cycle I usually
use the normal setting I usually do 50 minutes of dry time and I am done in about 90 minutes total
what I love about this and this is one of the pros to this type of unit I never have to remember if I
took something out of the washer and put it in the dryer it's gonna happen anyway so there's
none of that like oh did I switch that load before that it starts getting that funk smell so I only
need to use just one of these pod style laundry detergent packets per load that I do in here so
very easy to keep these on hand to do the laundry here another question that people ask is can you
really fit that many things in here and like I showed you four huge towels that I can fit
in here with the microfiber but I do usually one load per day for our whole family of four
that's usually adding a towel in each day a couple of dish towels everything that we're wearing
as far as clothing goes in one load per day we totally keep up on laundry and my kids actually
love it because it gives them less clothes to have to put away on a daily basis than if I am
going to the laundromat and doing a large amount of laundry at once so one of the cons to this unit
is you do need to be at a campground with full hookups if you are boondocking you're not going
to be able to do this number one it takes a lot of water so you really need to be hooked up to water
and you need sewer because there's going to be a lot of gray water that's generated
from this washer drying unit two you really need to have electricity
it does pull a decent amount of electricity to run the dryer part and the washer part so you really
cannot use this while boondocking you really need to be using it when you're hooked up to
full hookups another con it's not going to fit things like large blankets or a load of sheets
so most of the time when you're in a sticks and bricks house if you have a large blanket you're
taking that to a laundromat that's got a larger machine for that kind of stuff anyway
but on days that I need to wash sheets which I usually only wash our sheets every two to three
weeks those I usually have to do in a residential size washer or dryer so things like sheets or
blankets you do need a larger size washer for but for the everyday stuff it's great so now when we
first bought this rig from the previous owner I had never used one of these onboard washer dryers
before and my first thought was just take it out it takes up a lot of space this is a lot of space
that I could use for storage we were getting along just fine without a washer and dryer for
our previous years of RV life why would I need one now when it takes up all this space but I thought
I would give it a little bit of time see if maybe I would use it or not the previous owners said
they had never used it so they couldn't be for sure if it even worked or not so I thought okay
well we'll just kind of try it out the next time that we're out well we did and I will tell you now
I will never be without one of these units again especially after having this past year of RV life
in a pandemic like we have so this particular model of the splendid is vented now we've not
had any other model other than this one I have read and heard that the non-vented units don't
dry clothes as well as the vented ones we've never had a problem with this getting our clothes
actually dry so I will definitely say these vented ones seem to work great just because
that has definitely been our experience so one thing to remember about this particular style unit
is that if you've got some clothing in there that are like t-shirt type material and you leave it
in there for an extended period of time after the cycle is done it can come out a little bit wrinkly
so the key is to pull the clothes out as soon as the cycle completes and then just to hang them up
and they'll be wrinkle free so one last pro to having the onboard washer and dryer when this
thing's on the spin cycle it shakes the whole rig the pro to that is you never have to explain to
the children why that the rig is shaking you can just simply say oh that's just the washer dryer
now here's the bonus tip that I promised you a fellow RVer taught me this a while ago and I
started doing it and found that it works great so we travel primarily in the summer and on extended
weekends throughout the school year quarters I save them up and I put them in a ziploc
and I just squirrel them away all year long so I have a bag full of quarters that I keep in our rig
to be able to use at any rv laundry mats or state park laundromats any campground that has laundry
facilities another great idea for doing this is because it's great to have small change on you and
in your rig for things like toll booths or any of those times where you just need some small change
now last summer my kids thought that it was just totally a bonus for them because we have gotten
to the end of our summer travels we are going to be getting ready to go to our home base for
the school year and I had a whole bag of quarters left and there was an arcade at the RV park that
we were staying at and so they thought it was pretty cool that mom had a bunch of quarters
that I let them go use at the arcade because I was done traveling for the summer and I knew I didn't
need it for laundry so let us know in the comments what your experience has been with doing laundry
on the road do you use laundry facilities do you drive into town to use the laundry
do you have an onboard washer dryer is it a combo unit is it a stackable what have you found
works best for laundry for rv life let us know in the comments and that way others can see as
well and get some suggestions on some things that could help them with living the RV life
when it comes to laundry so thanks so much for watching don't forget to check us out over on
patreon if you'd like to support the channel there and as always we'll see you on the road