Special Report: Dirty Laundry
We’re taking a break for the holidays and will return in January. Here’s something I wrote on the road but never got around to posting. Enjoy!
We’ve been traveling for quite a while, so what do we do with our dirty doodads? Well, as it turns out, a variety of alternatives to using expensive hotel services exist (some hotels are more reasonable, especially in Asia). It has been a learning process.
In Germany, we had access to a washing machine and dryer in our Airbnb, but we had to fumble with the controls. You could set the water temperature in increments of 10 degrees Celsius up to the melting point of some metals, and set the spin cycle speed faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo S sedan racing along the Autobahn. Washing clothes felt like a science project. (cost: $0).
In Italy, a hotel in the area of Valdobbiadene charged by the garb and we had a lot of grimy garments. (Cost: $280 and a glass of Prosecco)
In Malaysia, a token-operated laundromat injected both wash powder and liquid detergent into the wash cycle. I needed a Masters degree in chemistry to calculate the proper ratio of powder to liquid and may have overdone it as my pajamas still smell of fresh floral scents. (Cost: $1.40 per cycle)
In Taiwan, the hotel laundry room on the roof had a coin-operated washer and dryer. You could relax outside at a round metal table absorbing the rays of the glowing red and green sign as your clothing churned and spun. (Cost: a neon tan)
In one furnished apartment, basement washers and dryers were reserved and paid for via an app downloaded on my phone. The app courteously let me know when my load was finished. (Cost: patience)
Very few of our clothes require dry cleaning unless we need something for a night at the opera or, more likely, for a fancy Michelin restaurant. The better hotels offer dry cleaning services, so it is just a game of strategy when to launder it. (Cost: a belt size around the waistline per Michelin star)
And, at the end of it all, when an article of clothes becomes ripped, stained, spotted, soiled, threadbare or otherwise irreparably impaired (or we just get bloody tired of wearing it), it gets replaced. (Cost: Shopping day!)
Keeping clothing clean has been far less of a project than anticipated, and if one of us needs to sit in a laundromat for a while, reading a book pleasantly passes the time, and we have all the time in the world! (Cost: Priceless)
