World School Diaries

We knew we’d need to strategically find washing machines and tumble dryers on our months long motorhome trip in Europe… and find them we have!

It was something of an anxiety for me (L – the mum) as I know how quickly we rinse through underwear! We managed to do a good sized washing load in Bouillon in Belgium, at the Papillon site with laundry facilities, but the time was creeping up again where we would be out of our fave cotton undies!

Luckily, several things happened… we thought we had an issue with our gas system in the motorhome, so we decided to pack up and say goodbye to the amazing stellplatz in the Black Forest and locate a gas engineer in Freiburg to give Sassy a once over (Germany have strict gas rules for recreational vehicles and so when the engineer had checked it all out, we felt confident that everything was ok!). Because of this gas check we ended up moving back towards France, to be closer to help should we have needed any work done and also to find warmer weather, in case we couldn’t use our gas for heat. The temperature on our last night in the mountains had dropped dramatically and we really didn’t want to be without our lovely heating system!

We knew we wanted electric hook up, so we could power our fridge etc if the gas was an issue. And we also needed a top up food shop… that’s how we found ourselves in a Camping Car Park site just across the border into France, in a little town called Fessenheim.

Much to my delight, they had two units of the Wash-Me machines and dryers!

After congratulating ourselves on finding such a great little stop over, we got 3 loads of washing done. This included all of the clothes we wanted freshening up, our towels and all of our cotton bedsheets. Between this achievement, knowing the gas system was safe and well and topping up on a good food shop, we were on cloud 9!

Tips for the Wash-Me machines:

• They accept bank cards with a tap on the contactless payment slot, so you don’t need a ton of loose change for these ones (unlike the machines you find on campsites, which are very often coin operated only).
• These machines ask you not to add your own detergent and softener, and instead ask you to pay an extra euro to add it to your load.
• Give the washing machines a sniff test – we’ve seen huge, stained duvets rolling around in the bigger drums, and if it’s urine or vomit, we wouldn’t want to put our stuff in for a wash afterwards! Especially the bigger 20kg washer.
• People often wash dog bedding in these machines too, so have a look for pet hair inside the unit first.
• The washing cycle for our ones were 30 mins
• The drying cycle varied for our clothes (30 mins to dry them all) to our bedsheets (100 mins overall, for 3 x sets of bedding)
• Take a laundry bag or basket with you.
• Try not to drop your freshly washed items on the floor (like I did with some socks!), these units are often in car parks.
• Get some jobs done whilst the wash or dry is on.
• I set a timer on my watch so I knew exactly when the cycles would finish. Then I made sure I was back before this time. For really busy locations, you find lots of people waiting to use them and we didn’t want our washing being tipped out of the machines!

Onto our next leg of the journey soon, where we are hauling it down the south of France.