Several people have asked us about laundry and what do we do as full-timers. Essentially you have three options as a full-timer. The first, use an RV sized washer and dryer (assuming your rig has connections and space). The second, is to use campground laundry facilities. Finally, the third option is use a commercial laundromat.
RV washer and dryers have one huge advantage in that you can do laundry whenever and wherever you want (assuming you have full sewer connection). There are two types of machines for RV’s. The first is a combined washer and dryer. The second is stackable washer and dryer. Both types are smaller than home washers and dryers and cannot fit as many clothes.
Ten years ago when we had our class A RV we had a combined washer/dryer unit. If you could get a pair jeans, some underwear and maybe two or three shirts in it you were doing good. Forget about sheets and towels as they were too big.
The combined machine took forever to do a load. If my memory serves three to four hours was what it took to wash and dry your clothes and even then they came out wrinkled. I suppose if we had let them dry longer that would have alleviated some of the wrinkling but it’s hard to say as we didn’t use them but a time or two. While the unit was in use the whole RV shook and was annoying - especially if you were trying to work.
The price of a combined washer/dryer unit is about $1400 and stackable washers and dryers are about $1000 and $800 respectively. That’s a good chunk of money that takes up a significant amount of space in your RV that could be used for something else. These prices are for models listed on CampingWorld.com so there might be models that are more or less expensive.
If a washer/dryer was a must have I would definitely choose the stackable versions. At least that way you could wash and dry at the same time.
Campground Laundry is an option that we’ve chosen. We have about three weeks of clothing and use the space from the missing washer/dryer as our clothes hamper. When it’s time to do laundry we have three baskets and transport them to the laundry facility in a foldable wagon that doubles as Carols hammered dulcimer transport at music festivals.
The great thing we’ve found about the campground facilities is that there’s almost always three to four washers and three to four dryers. They’re not free by any means with an average of $1.75 per wash load and then about $1.00 per dry cycle with things like towels and sheets maybe taking a second cycle. So for about $10 we can get all of our laundry done in about an hour and a half.
The only time we’ve had a problem is when the campground has a lot of people in it and they’re already in use. So we avoid doing laundry from Friday to Monday and that problem is solved.
Quarters are a pain to acquire and carry around but most of the campgrounds have quarter dispensers and certainly most of the campground stores can help you out too. A few of the bigger campgrounds even have smart phone apps to pay for laundry now which is very convenient (though more expensive).
Not all campgrounds have laundry facilities. If this is an important thing you can look at campground reviews on such places as RVTripWizard and you’ll see what facilities they have at the campground. And when in doubt ask. Most commercial campgrounds have laundry, some state campground do as well, but it’s been our experience that many public campgrounds do not. I think this is in large part due to them being built long before RV’ing became real popular and with state budgets being cramped it’s not high on their list of improvements.
Having a washer and dryer in the RV is convenient but does it make financial sense? Assuming you spend about $1800 for a decent pair and you do $15 worth of laundry that would take around 120 laundry ‘cycles’ for you to spend more at the laundromat. If you’re only doing laundry every three weeks that would take around seven years to recoup your return on investment. We don’t have kids so our laundry needs are pretty minimal at this point so your mileage may vary.
When all else fails there’s usually a commercial laundry facility in any decent sized town. These usually have even more machines with a large number of machines. I do not know how much it costs per load as I haven’t gone into one but I know Carol had to go to one when we were in central Michigan over the summer.
So for us, having an RV washer and dryer didn’t make sense. We are perfectly happy with using campground laundry facilities since we believe we’re saving money in the long run and doing laundry faster. Not all campgrounds have laundry facilities so if this is something you need check on their website, or campground review website, or when you call to make reservations.