Best Choice Portable Washer
[star rating=”3.5″]
I could see the benefit of this washer for someone in a small home or apartment but if you do a lot of laundry (like myself) it may or may not work for you.Â
I have so much to say about this portable washer that I’m not sure where to begin.
I had high hopes for this, the appearance is very cool, it looks really neat so I was hoping that it would work well too, which actually it does, it will certainly get your clothes clean so that is not my issue, my issue(s) are with the design itself and the fact that I found this to be not extremely user friendly.
First, the title is a little misleading, this is not a [amazon text=washer&asin=B01ICBLBL0] and a dryer, this is a washer with a spin cycle so that your clothes are not soaked and you can either line dry them or dry them regularly. The instructions that are included could be elaborated on, that’s why I wanted to show a video / review of us trying it the first time so hopefully we answer any questions that other people might have.
The cord is a little short (grounded 3 prong cord) and the drain hose is definitely too short but it does look like you could add another hose onto it but I’m not 100% on that.
So here we go step by step:
Figure out what you want to wash and choose wisely because this will not hold a lot, possibly an outfit or two depending on your size or at most maybe 3 towels. To make sure your clothes come clean you don’t want to overload it, just like any other washer. We had to start with this on the ground because we had to have gravity on our side to fill it with the intake hose. The hose fits nicely into the top of the machine and it is clearly labeled but when you go to fill it with your faucet you have to hold it on there very carefully or you will get sprayed. It does work though but some kind of rubber grommet or something to hold it on the faucet would help a lot.
After it is full, at least for us, we had to lift it up onto the counter. I did this instead of my husband because I wanted to see how heavy it was, it was as heavy to me as a very full laundry basket of wet clothes (mind you we only had 1 shirt and 1 towel in there). Once lifted onto the counter and the detergent is in (which is a complete guessing game by the way) you are ready to go. We decided to run the drain hose under the [amazon text=machine&asin=B01ICBLBL0] to hold it in place so it could drain into our sink. The agitator works very well, this is where the machine shines. You can see it in the video, we ran it for 12 minutes and the clothes smelled great and were noticeable cleaner.
Next, you have to drain the [amazon text=machine&asin=B01ICBLBL0] which you do by turning the dial to drain and this is just a gravity drain. After that you move the clothes over to the spin side, they are going to be heavy and wet. The spin side is smaller than the washing side and there is a cover that we decided you just put on top of the clothes because the instructions don’t really tell you. When you do the spin cycle it will shake like crazy, just like most washing machines, it will also drain while working so make sure your hose in place. You are suppose to add clean water durning this part but we couldn’t because our intake hose was up high and the faucet was down low. The directions say to run the spin cycle before you add the water so we figured the only way it would work for us is if we added the water with a pitcher or something. There is a safety mechanism for the spin cycle so that when you lift the lid it stops which is good. I should note here too that for some reason on that side of the [amazon text=washer&asin=B01ICBLBL0], the lid won’t go down all the way but it still worked and didn’t seem to be an issue.
After the spin cycle you are suppose to wash it again with fresh water and then I believe spin it again then you can dry it with whatever method you choose.
So all that being said I’m not sure this is going to help me any. I thought maybe we could use it for long camping trips but I’m not sure there is a good way to do that doesn’t involve dumping soapy water on the ground which isn’t cool. If you’re in a dorm (I’m just speculating here because I’ve never been in a dorm, I lived off campus when in college) or maybe if you have a very small home and not a lot of laundry this might be a great solution for you. Your clothes will get clean with this that is for sure, you just have to put forth the effort and figure out a good solution for a location to make it work for you.
[amazon text=Click Here For Detailed Product Information From Amazon&asin=B01ICBLBL0]
I just got mine. I looked up YouTube videos to figure out what to do. Needless to say i just figured it out on my own. I built up a pedestal next to my tub that is removable. I set the washing machine up on it, plugged it up and put the drain hose over into the tub, put the clothes in that I wanted to wash, then got a bucket and put the detergent and softener into it then filled with water and poured over the clothes until it was where I thought it should be. I then turned it on for the 15 minutes. I set it to drain and drained the water while putting stuff into spin side. When done, I wrung out some of the clothes and put them on the spin side, put the cover over the top, closed the small lid till clicked in then the top lid and ran for the 5 min. I repeated this until the load was done. Then I read that I should have added cold water to the spin cycle so now I know to spin it, then add cold water and spin them out a second time and hang around the apartment. It was fast, simple, easy. *I also had a small bucket in floor on side of drain to hold it down into to ensure the last little bit was drained out.
This really does get your clothes extra clean. I could not believe clothes that had not been worn had so much dirt come out of them, the water was dirty when drained. U do the cold water to ensure the last spin that the water comes out clear so u have gotten all dirt and soap out of the clothes. Hope this help make using yours easier.
This is great information, thank you for posting this!