Travel Life Hack: Washing/Drying Your Clothes in A Hotel Room
MY LIFE IS NON-STOP GLAMOUR.
If you travel enough, you will inevitably find yourself washing your socks, underwear, and at least two or three t-shirts in a hotel bathroom sink.
As any experienced traveler will tell you, this is the easy part. Getting your clothes wet in the confines of a hotel room isn’t a problem.
I just realized that sounds kind of pervy.
The point remains: washing your clothes is a snap. It’s getting them dry that’s difficult.
(I should probably warn you now, this post has actual, useful travel advice. This may alarm and confuse my longtime readers. I’m sorry, you guys. I’ve got a terrible cold and didn’t sleep very well last night, so this entry is a lot shorter and more practical than any of us would like. In my defense, the advice I have to dispel is pretty obvious.)
After you’ve washed your clothes in the bathroom sink (I like to use equal parts hotel shampoo and cursing), squeeze all the water that you can out of them. If they are particularly sopping, roll them up in a towel and twist the dickens out of it. If your clothes are delicate, this will probably pull them out of shape and make them look like burlap bags. (Note: this is how most travel clothing is designed.)
If you are in Europe, odds are your hotel room will have a towel warmer. Turn that sucker on. Take your hopefully-now-just-a-little-damp clothes and drape them over the towel warmer, like so:
(Now the entire internet knows I have pink underwear.)
Try to get as much surface area of the clothes in contact with the heated pipe as possible. (Again, this totally sounds pervy.)
You’ll find that the heat will dry your clothes in just a few hours. If you can, move the items around after a couple of hours, so you reach all the damp spots. (Again, pervy.)
(This method means your clothes will be stiff and a little stretched out, but they will be clean. )
And if you aren’t in a room that has a towel warmer? Try using a hair dryer to remove some of the moisture and then hang your clothes to dry (do not hang damp clothing on a wooden hanger or it will stain). I find an ironing board works pretty well, as does the shower curtain rod.
Okay, all this … real world knowledge is exhausting. I need to take some DayQuil and lie down. Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled useless ramblings.
