Vacation Laundry Tips: How to deal with family travel laundry without getting completely overwhelmed
You planned the trip, took the trip, bought the t-shirt, and now your are home. How do you deal with all that family vacation laundry without going completely insane?
Before your vacation laundry is in piles all over the house and you need a vacation from the mess try these laundry hacks for before, during, and after vacation or family trips. Make vacation and travel laundry with family more manageable before, during, and after your family vacation!
Dealing with laundry before, during, and after traveling with kids!
Laundry tips for before you travel
PACK LESS
- Pack less. If your kids are anything like mine, clothes that are actually clean will end up with dirty laundry regardless of what you do. Therefore, do yourself a post-vacation favor, and pack less from the start.
Packing fewer items –only what you will actually need on your family vacation—will already put you ahead of the post-vacation laundry game.
In fact, our family of 5 spent more than 10 weeks in Europe with only a carry on for each person. When we returned home, putting away 5 suitcases of dirty clothes was not nearly as overwhelming as it could have been had we overpacked.
2. Avoid delicates and ironing. Delicate items and items that require ironing before wearing again take much longer to deal with than normal wash cycle items. Do yourself a post-vacation laundry favor and avoid packing delicates or iron items that will only add to your after-vacation laundry stress.
3. Pack like colors for fewer loads. If you, like me, coordinate your children’s outfits, you can plan to coordinate colors as well. If most or all of the outfits are in the same color scheme then you can do fewer loads of laundry when you get home.
How to do laundry while traveling: Tips for managing family laundry while traveling.
4. Do laundry while you travel. Depending on how you are traveling laundry facilities are available somewhere!
- Utilize your in-house laundry facilities. As a growing family, we prefer to stay in Airbnbs, condos, and apartments when we travel that are equipped with laundry facilities. Tossing in a load while traveling can be a huge favor to your future self.
- Plus, washing a load or two of laundry allows you to pack less and your children to re-wear the clothing they already have.
- Use a laundry service. While our family was in London we saw residential laundry services everywhere. Plus local dry cleaners often have a fluff and fold service that will do regular laundry. So, if you do not have laundry facilities while traveling, check out the nearest laundry service or dry cleaner and lighten your post-vacation laundry loads.
- Use hotel laundry services. If you are on a cruise, in a hotel, or other resort, you will likely have access to an on-site laundry service with a 1-2 day turnaround. Don’t be afraid to splurge on the laundry service so that you don’t curse your post-vacation laundry responsibilities.
- Sink washing. Make use of sink packs and your bathroom or kitchen sink. If you only need one or two items washed, make use of sink pack or camping detergent and your bathroom sink. I love these Tide sink packs and keep a few in my toiletries bag for when I need one or two items washed quickly.
- 5. Take your detergent. Travel with detergent or sink packs. Whether you are doing a full load or a quick sink load, traveling with a small pouch of powdered laundry detergent can be a life saver.
If you are flying, you can fly with up to 3 ounces of liquid, but who wants to risk detergent spilling all over their luggage. Therefore, I prefer to travel with camping detergent strips or a pouch of high efficiency powdered detergent rather than paying premium prices for an entire bottle of detergent that I won’t end up using.
How to Organize Laundry While You Travel with Family
6. Collapsible Mesh Pop-up laundry baskets. My favorite new vacation laundry hack is the collapsible laundry bin. I purchased these simple, colorful collapsible laundry baskets and tucked one into each of my family’s suitcases each time we traveled this year.
Not only did it help me manage the laundry by keeping it off the floor, it also made organizing and sorting it so much easier.
My kids loved choosing their color and were responsible for putting their own clothes in their own bin rather than throwing them all over the apartment or hotel floor!
Plus, on family road trips, I just put the bin with the dirty clothes in the back of the car rather than having to pack it back into the suitcases. Then, when we return home, the suitcases have only clean items to put away while the bins go directly to the laundry room.
How to deal with family laundry after vacation.
7. Divide dirty from clean laundry. Divide your clean and dirty laundry before you go home. Before we return home, I often split clean and dirty laundry between suitcases.
One suitcase might carry only dirty laundry while another might carry only clean. That way, when you return home, one suitcase can be put away immediately while the other can go straight to the laundry room. Half the work is already done!
8. Ignore it. If all else fails…ignore the laundry. Sometimes laundry looks a lot worse when you get home than after a good night of sleep and rest. Don’t let a pile of laundry and suitcases convince you that those wonderful family memories weren’t worth the work or hassle.
RELATED POST: Travel with Kids is Worth Every Sweaty, Unmemorable Moment
Sometimes moms just need to step away from the laundry and appreciate the moments with their children instead of trying to manage all of the constant chaos.
Tips for dealing with family vacation laundry!
Laundry after vacation can be a huge hassle. Hopefully these tips can help you prepare before, during, and after family trips for a more manageable laundry job after your trip.
If nothing else, get yourself the collapsible laundry bins to at least keep your items more organized while traveling and help you manage vacation laundry.