Portable Clothes Line; options for drying camping washing
One of the most common accessories for caravans, motorhomes and campers is a Portable Clothes Line, and we picked one up a few years ago and have greatly appreciated it.
If you are on the road for more than a couple of days, you will have to start doing washing. Of course, caravan parks can be a great place to do this, but we do our best to avoid them where possible, and that means you need a different method for washing and drying your clothes.
One area we’ve always struggled with though is finding somewhere suitable to hang the clothes up, especially when you start doing bigger loads of washing.
We purchased a 3 dollar clothes hanger some time ago which has been amazing, but it only takes so much before it becomes a problem. Our solution was to purchase a portable clothes line from Snowys, and we’ve used it extensively over our 6 week trip up north, and many times since.
Like other products, we made sure that someone else we knew had it first, and rated it before making the plunge.
It was also paid for entirely by us, and our comments are not influenced by sponsorships or anything else dodgy.
Our portable clothes line requirements
Light weight
Our mobile weighing exercise some time back showed that we had to be awfully careful with what we take, and how we load things up. I’ve seen some nice portable washing lines, but if they are more than a couple of kg in weight its unnecessary. The unit we found weighs only 3kg
Easy to set up
No one wants to spend more time doing washing than they had to. The unit we found is pretty easy to set up, although the actual washing lines sometimes get tangled and make it a bit annoying.
Able to hold enough clothes and not tip over
The portable washing line comes with pegs that you can use to stop it tipping over in the wind, and it holds plenty of clothes. These are screw in pegs, but with a handle on top so you can install them without any tools. They work OK, except when the ground is hard, and then we end up using screw in pegs that take tool.
Another great option if you are lazy is to set the portable washing line up near your drawbar, and use the trailer chains around the upright to keep it standing. This is much faster, and prevents your nice clean clothes ending up in a pile on the floor!
If you have an awning
If you have an awning, or something else you can attach a piece of stainless steel wire to, this is the ultimate solution. Whilst you won’t be able to hang up a huge amount of clothing, its often enough to get things moving, and its brilliant for hanging towels or bathers on when you come back from a swim.
Our 3 dollar hanger
We also love the 3 dollar clothes hanger that we purchased from Bunnings (Sunfresh 20 Peg Portable Hanging Clothes Dryer).
This is perfect for young kids clothes that are always getting wet or dirty and needing cleaning. We hang it off the car awning, the Reconn R2 doors, the awning or anywhere else that we can put it!
How has our portable clothes line gone?
We’ve used our washing line fairly extensively, and are pretty happy with it overall. The bag is looking a bit worse for wear, and we’ve lost a few of the feet stoppers, but nothing has broken or caused us any real grief.
Sometimes when you pull it out of the bag the lines get tangled and can take a bit of mucking around to fix, but maybe that’s an operator error issue, where we pack it away badly!
The plastic knobs that you tighten to lock it all together seem a bit sketchy, but so far we’ve had no issues, and I’ll just modify it if they break. We are happy overall, and given you need something to dry your clothes on, I haven’t seen anything better.
I will be looking at installing a mount that I can drop it onto on our drawbar, so you can get away with ever having to peg it down as this is the most time consuming and annoying part.
I will admit to often getting out a roll of spearfishing line and making an actual line between two trees, or the camper and a tree in preference to using this, but the portable washing line holds a lot more clothing, which is often required.
Overall, we are happy with it and would get another one, but we’d also be happy to try something else too. What do you use for a portable clothes line?
