Comments | frugal_fans: fantastic cheap hand-laundry thingie that works well...

ngakmafaery in frugal_fans

fantastic cheap hand-laundry thingie that works well...

Mar 02, 2005 18:23

http://www.laundry-alternative.com/

I was so delighted to hear of this on poor_skills last week, sent for one, and it got here already, and bygawd it does actually seem to work pretty well. I can see ways to Get In Big Trouble, like spraying water all over if you aren't doing it right, but I ( Read more... )

Comments 6

tx_cronopio March 3 2005, 00:11:59 UTC

Confused.... if it doesn't use electricity, what does it use? Sounds interesting, but I'd love more details if you are willing.

you crank it by hand! ngakmafaery March 3 2005, 00:38:01 UTC

It is set up so that you crank it by hand, which is not hard if you don't overload or something, and then it lets the water out with a little pipe or just tip it out...it's like some sort of old-fashioned ice cream maker, and is portable, very lightweight when empty...

thebratqueen March 3 2005, 02:16:50 UTC

I had something like that years ago when my roommates and I lived in an apt that had a working dryer, but a broken laundry machine.

I was surprised that that little thing really did clean. I'd first heard of it in an infomercial so I figured something had to be wrong with it. But no, worked pretty well.

About the only thing that I had to get used to was the fact that it doesn't spin dry the clothes, so dealing with how wet washed clothes were was a bit of a culture shock. But otherwise yeah, it does work.

so I bought a salad spinner... ngakmafaery March 3 2005, 21:50:37 UTC

...really, and i am very glad to say that bygawd it does whip a lot of the water out...I bought one that is more solid than the cheapie five-dollar ones...and it leaves the tights much better than dripping. It seems to take a lot of the water out so you would givwe it one little final squeeze and then hang it up or put on heater or whatever...if you don't use the salad spinner or something else like the 119.00 one they sell, it does leave them pretty darn wet, although last night I tried all sorts of tricks, like whipping the machine around with the container open to see if that made it drier, and it made not that much difference. Now i just have to find a place to put all the clean, still-somewhat-wet clothes that I'm doing, because the stuff I put out on the line last night froze into scary iciciles

abbylee March 3 2005, 06:51:13 UTC

I can't seem to figure out how big it is. How easy would it be to stash it in the corner of a closet?

Also, how wet are the clothes when you're done? I have a washer/dryer in my building, so I wouldn't mind throwing large loads in the dryer after, but it wouldn't be worth it if that ends up taking twice as long.

This does sound perfect for making sure that I do little loads more often instead of waiting until all my clothes are unwearable.

I can't find dimensions in numbers... ngakmafaery March 3 2005, 21:55:46 UTC

...but realistically, it's like two very very big salad bowls put together to form a closed bowl...like a regular-sized beachball but more keg-shaped. The little frame-thing comes off easily, if you don't put the little covers into every hole, and so it might take up a quarter-third of the floor of what i might think of as a 'normal' american closet. I forget about Europe, but the closets are often smaller there...let me know if you need me to measure it more using no ruler!