Portable Compact Mini Twin Tub Washing Machine and Spin Cycle w/ Hose, 13lbs. Capacit

[Heidi Mull]

OK, picked up a salad spinner at a thrift store for 25 cents. 

Show off. But seriously though, I do see how when washing only small items the salad spinner could be helpful.

As an update to my Panda spin dryer....today I had my first actual "laundry day" with it. Doing about 3 loads.

Examples of loads I've done include...

Load 1:

• 1 t-shirt
  
• 3 of my jeans (size 00)
  
• a full size thick terry cloth adult onesie (with hood!)
  
• several pairs of underwear
  
• could have fit more small items, but I tried to fit a full size bath towel in there. While it technically fit, the load did not spin correctly and I took it out.
  

Load 2:

• Bath towel
  
• Kitchen towel
  
• 2 heavy duty aprons (part of work uniform)
  
• t-shirt
  
• cardigan
  
• several pairs underwear
  

After the first load I was in heaven. I washed our full bath towels--which, honestly, bath towels are a luxury item, we could get by just fine drying ourselves off with hand towels--and they came out of the spinner almost completely dry. In fact, everything was. I kept squeeing over each item because I was so surprised anew. No need to hang them terribly carefully to dry - they were barely damp. Not only can I hang them anywhere in the trailer without dripping, I don't have to worry about them touching wood or upholstery or anything else because it's simply not transferring moisture. The clean laundry simply isn't wet enough.

It also comes out of the spin dryer slightly warm, I think from the motor heating up. We can smell a bit of burning smell from the motor. Hopefully that's just offgassing? It's designed to automatically shut off after 5 minutes, but I don't always run it that long, 3.5 minutes is often plenty. It does get a bit drier if run the full 5 minutes, but often only drips are coming out the drain at that point.

Loading it carefully so that a load is balanced takes a bit of time. I had the idea to spin dry a detergent-laden load, remove, rinse, and then spin dry again, but it just feels like too much work. Rinsing it traditionally still makes the most sense.

I fully expect all laundry to dry overnight. In the past, it took 2-3 days to dry out jeans. The test pair of jeans I tried out in the spin dryer? Those were dry by morning.

This is also about 3X the amount of laundry I've ever been able to do by hand in one day before. Soooo happy.