Laundry
30 days on the dusty trails and another 10 or 12 days to get to Morocco means 40+ days of clothes to pack, carry and keep clean.
I have already purchased 5 hiking shirts that will easily do 3 days at a time mostly becuase I will be inside the air conditioned truck. Most of the dirt comes from setting up camp, wrestling with roof tents and tailgates.
The ability to rinse through T-shirts, shirts and unmentionables is one consideration but the other is to have somewhere to store dirty laundry away from clean clothes. When we travelled to Scandi in 2019 waking up in the morning with clothes smelling of campfire smoke was a problem and bin bags full of smoked clothes was not ideal.
During my internet searching I found lots of very earnest and very wholesome looking hikers washing clothes in mountain streams (especially socks it appears) and it set me thinking what would be not just possible but easy. We will have rest days where in theory we will have good amounts of water and 12 hours of washing line potential to dry whatever needs cleaning.
The serious hikers talked of bacteria and athletes foot and other very nasty infestations but I don’t think that the inside of the L200 is going to match the West Highland Way in terms of body rotting dangers.
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube secretly recording everything I look at an advert appeared today for “Soap Leaves” and a cheap dry bag – I already have dry bags not to keep the water out but to keep the dust out so I am familiar with at least half of this idea.
Soap leaves it seems are a thing and are used in washing machines as 10×8 large sheets but can also be as small as a few Centimetres. Just add water as they say and your cheap dry bag becomes a mini clothes washing bag. It seems that for just a fiver you can get 50 soap leaves in both clothes washing and body washing form.
At this stage I have no idea how washing yourself with something resembling a cigarette rolling paper works but I am open minded. For the clothes washing its as easy as pop it in the bag so not an issue.
At 5cm x 6cm and 14g these little packs are going to add nothing to my luggage carrying and unlike bottles of liquid dont need to be isolated to avoid leaks and further problems.
I found this bright red small dry bag lurking in the clearance section of the same website so added that to the basket. Fifteen quid for laundry bag, laundry wash and a pack of soaps just for testing. Another potential problem solved and ticked off the list.
