Wash Clothes Anywhere With the Scrubba

By Ann Binlot November 14, 2015

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Many of us have been at that point where you’ve been traveling for so long, your only option for clean underwear and clothes is to wash them in your hotel sink because there’s no time to hit a Laundromat or to use the hotel’s dry cleaning service because you have to leave first thing in the morning. Australian Ash Newland had that same problem when he decided to take a four-month break from his job as a patent attorney to travel to Africa and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

“During the planning stages for the trip, we realized that with all our cold weather and camping gear, we would only be able to pack a few changes of casual clothes,” says Newland. “This led to the issue of how we were going to wash our clothes every couple of days. After mulling over this issue for a few weeks, I was led to the idea of washboards — they have been around for centuries and they work very efficiently. The downside is that they are bulky and still require a sink or bucket. It was then that I had the revelation that if we could incorporate a highly flexible washboard into a waterproof sealable bag, we could change the way people wash clothes while traveling.”

So Ash developed a highly useful contraption he called the Scrubba Wash Bag. Simply add cleansing liquid along with two to three liters of water, seal it, take out the air, and rub your garments on the hundreds of nodules in the bag to scrub your garments clean for as little as 30 seconds. Next, rinse in the shower or bag, and hang your clothes to dry.

The Scrubba is so handy, that the press has hailed it as “the world’s smallest washing machine.” It also makes a great gift for all the travelers in your life.

For more information, visit thescrubba.com.

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Travel

Ann Binlot is a New York-based freelance writer who contributes to publications like The Economist, Wallpaper*, Monocle…

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