Comments on: How to Do Laundry on a Road Trip Like John Steinbeck

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:04:14 +0000

I would recommend that you add a plunger washer to your list of the things you need. I have one of these tools and it makes laundry by hand a reasonable thing. It is still hard work though. I use it when I am camping.

By: Rick S.

Rick S. — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:35:20 +0000

No matter where we do our laundry it ends up in our streams!

When I was in the Navy I one of my units was MIUWU-208 in Miami. We did operations in the Gulf and spent weeks in the field. We would tie our clothes to the tent lines with laundry soap in the pockets and let the rain wash them. Other than that it was either wait to get back to civilization or use the ocean, which leaves a salt residue you REALLY DON’t want as it irritates areas of your body you don’t want irritated. The trick is to figure out how much soap to use and when the rains will come, but other than that it worked out pretty well.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:08:44 +0000

You know those kickball or soccer-style ice cream makers that you toss around to make ice cream? I wonder if anyone has ever thought about creating such an item for do-it-yourself-on-the-road laundry.

I can certainly understand the concerns about having laundry and mold stains in your car as you are driving, but I suspect if you put that into a 5 galleon bucket into a slightly larger container (or put it in the trunk of your car), you should be fine. Right?

By: Kay

Kay — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:28:56 +0000

A suggestion about when to add detergent, whether it be for the method described here or in a regular washing machine. Reverse the steps: first fill the bucket (or machine) with water, then mix in the detergent thoroughly, and finally toss in your clothes. That way the clothes are impregnated from the get-go with soapy water. Otherwise, they first get soaked with plain water which will act as somewhat of a barrier to the penetration of the detergent added last.

By: m

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:55:53 +0000

As a resident of Iraq for the last 4 years working for the US Army I have a lot of experience with this method and it is much simpler than described. You need a 5 gallon bucket and enough water to fill it 3 times. Loosely fill it with clothes and add 2 capfuls of woolite and 1 capful of bleach. ‘Stomp’ on the clothes in the bucket a while, rinse twice by more ‘stomping’ and hang up overnight. Socks may take more rinsing to get all the soap out for some reason. This will produce some of cleanest clothes you will ever wear.

By: David W

David W — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:30:57 +0000

Awesome piece! I just recently read Travels with Charley for the first time. I’ve been experimenting with laundry in the shower. It’s unusual, but once you get used to it, it’s saves me from laundry days. We will see just how sustainable it is…

By: Cody

Cody — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:59:56 +0000

I agree with Rich, please keep your laundry out of our streams!

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:11:18 +0000

Don’t put your soapy water in the stream, even with biodegradable soap. Biodegradable soap only breaks down when it is in the ground. If you put soapy water into a stream you’ll just end up with an oily slick on the top of the water.
Dig a small cat-hole and pour your grey water in there.

Don’t throw you’re apple cores on the ground. It habituates animals to human waste and alters the ecosystem. Small animals begin to eat apple cores and stop eating whatever they normally eat. Or large animals, like bears, can learn that campsites are a great place to find food and start hanging around there.
If you eat your apple top to bottom instead of around the center, you can eat the core without even noticing. You can throw the stem and seeds on the ground.

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:24:20 +0000

I would advise against drying large quantities of clothes inside a vehicle if you live in a humid or cool climate. Over time the moisture evaporating off your clothes and into the vehicle can lead to mold problems especially if there is food remnants or crumbs . There needs to be a cross breeze to assist drying and vent out the humid air to help dry out the interior. Clothing that has been hand wrung dry will usually have enough leftover moisture to start dripping and this will cause water spots on the carpet and seat fabric. Drying inside a vehicle would be a last option for me, a string tied to the side mirror to a walking stick works very well for a drying rack plus it gets the added benefit of being sterilized by UV light from the sun.

By: RM

RM — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:15:10 +0000

Alas, Travels With Charley has been proven to be mostly fabrication. REASON Magazine ran a story by Bill Steigerwald who bought Steinbeck’s lie before research and an attempted recreation of the trip revealed Steinbeck spent most of the trip with his wife (and Charley) in hotels and motels.
“But after nine months of fact checking and 11,276 miles of drive-by journalism, I can tell you for sure that:

• Steinbeck was almost never alone on his trip. Out of 75 days away from New York, he traveled with, stayed with, and slept with his beloved wife, Elaine, on 45 days. On 17 other days he stayed at motels and busy truck stops and trailer courts, or parked his camper on the property of friends.

• Steinbeck didn’t rough it. With Elaine he stayed at some of the country’s top hotels, motels, and resorts, not to mention two weeks at the Steinbeck family cottage in Pacific Grove, California, and a week at a Texas cattle ranch for millionaires. By himself, as he admits in Charley, he often stayed in luxurious motels.

• Steinbeck rarely camped under the stars in the American outback. The campout in Alice, North Dakota, wasn’t the only fabricated resting place in Charley. Steinbeck also made up the very next night, when he said he slept under the stars in the evil Badlands as the coyotes howled. He couldn’t have done that, since that was the same night he was taking his hot bath in a motel in Beach, North Dakota.

• Steinbeck also fibbed about camping alone overnight on a farm near Lancaster, New Hampshire. When a local writer, Jeff Woodburn, innocently went looking for that farm and the Yankee farmer who owned it as part of a 50-year anniversary story, he discovered that neither had ever existed. What Woodburn learned was that in September 1960 Steinbeck had actually lodged overnight at the exclusive Spalding Inn, where hotel management had to loan him a tie and jacket so he could eat in the dining room.”
http://reasonDOTcom/archives/2011/04/04/sorry-charley