Friday Follow-up: Wonder Wash!
By Karina | November 20, 2009
I received an email from reader Ameia asking
It’s been 2 years since you bought the Wonder Wash. I need something like this and am wondering if you still love it. Has it held up? Do you still use it? What about the little dryer?
So I thought maybe it would be a good time to follow up on this topic! For some background - in 2007 I bought a handy hand-crank washer called the “wonderwash” and an electric laundry spinner to get the water out.
The short answer is yes, I still love it.
The long answer, however, is longer: I haven’t used it in quite some time. But let me explain! I used the Wonder Wash for about 1 1/2 years pretty steadily. Around that time I got kind of extra busy, and started to cheat on The Wonder Wash. It would take me about an hour start to finish to wash ALL of my clothes, and because I lived in a small apartment I couldn’t leave it set up in order to just do a load every once in a while - it was a production to get the washer and dryer out and put them away afterwards. Then in May I moved to a house with a regular traditional washer and dryer, as well as a guy who wears jeans frequently and two kids who are here half time and generate huge quantities of laundry. I have definately taken the path of least resistance here!
I do think that living in a more traditional family unit has helped me clarify my feelings about in what ways the Wonder Wash is amazing:
- First, I rarely wear jeans or trousers - skirts are just more comfortable to me. In general I didn’t often wash my towels or sheets in the Wonder Wash and I think washing heavy jeans would be really hard. But it was really brilliant for all of my skirts and undergarments and shirts, and I had total confidence about my sweaters coming out of the wash in good shape!
- In terms of supplies, I didn’t have any problems using cold water in the wonderwash to get my clothes clean. I was using a very small amount of detergent, which was great - no worrying about running out suddenly.
- The Wonder Wash itself seemed to hold up quite well, but there were a few points in the structure which felt very rickety, and which I’d be afraid would break after a few more years of steady use. The electric dryer would occasionally become unbalanced and make a lot of noise, but it was in good shape too. I have them both still, they’re in my attic waiting for their chance to shine again.
- And like I said before, it would be really easy to use the Wonder Wash all the time if there was a dedicated place to leave it set up. But really, who has that? Ideally I guess it would be an outdoor “room” with a water hook-up and an easy way to drain the water out of the unit straight into your garden. And while it was easy to get away from using the Wonder Wash because of time constraints, in reality it wasn’t really that time-consuming to use. It was a nice time in my weekly routine where I could talk on the phone or listen to podcasts while I cranked away at the tumbler.
Does anyone else have any long term Wonder Wash experience? I know a few of you have purchased them yourselves.
So, hey: do you have a Friday Follow-Up or a post that you’ve been curious about? Send an email using our CONTACT FORM and Jenn and Karina will respond on a Friday coming soon.
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I have the Wonder Wash and use it for handwashables and small items. It is definately an item that needs a dedicated space but I like having it. Instead of the electric spinner, I employed an unused salad spinner that works very well for extricating water and much cheaper than the electric spinner.
Hello,
I have used two different versions of the ‘wonder wash’; version one was a Made in China dealie bought from Laundry-Alternative, and version two was a Made in USA dealie purchased from Lehman’s. Each lasted only about a year, for a single fella, washing 4 loads a week, including jeans. The Chinese version had a handy draining tube so that I could set it adjacent to my sink, whereas the USA version did not, thus requiring the unit to be turned upside down into my sink for draining and making more of a mess. The USA version had a gasket with a male plastic (!) bolt screwing into a metal receptacle that was quickly stripped after the second wash. The Chinese version used a metal bolt and I ended up using the Chinese top on my USA washer. The two different units were manufactured from different plastics, with my preference going to the USA made. I also preferred the USA made stand to the Chinese made stand, with the latter often requiring reassembly.
Ultimately what did in both units was the weight of washing jeans and heavy pants, and trying to do small loads in general. Basically, neither unit could handle uneven distribution of weight during the cranking. If I washed a small load and adjusted the water level accordingly, the load would be lopsided during cranking. To prevent this I would have to fill the unit to the top for any size load, thus unnecessarily waste water. For jeans, it was just difficult to ‘balance’ the load, and the same lopsided rotation during the cranking would occur. The lopsided loads eventually destroyed the crank or the unit’s base.
I like the concept, and both units would wash my clothes well enough (stains required scrubbing as a prewash), but they were not durable enough to be used as my main washing ‘machine’. If I was doing an RV trip, great. If I needed to wash delicates, absolutely. If I had cloth diapers, sure. But after my second unit broke on me, I purchased a plastic laundry wash sink with legs (Made in USA), connected the water hookups to it, attached my hand wringer on the side (a must for hand laundry) and have been happy just doing the soap/soak/scrub/rinse method.
I have my eye on a glass washboard from Lehman’s, which I will probably purchase in the near future. I think it will help out with scrubbing stains earned from gardening. I may also try the metal wash plunger tool attached to a 5 gallon bucket with lid, method.
cheers!
Other than the limitation of size, I LOVE this little thing. It doesn’t work for everything - I wouldn’t recommend jeans or anything heavy - but for small loads/light weight items - it works, and works well. I ended up making my own soap to get the right combination of cleaning and quick rinsing. And it took awhile to sort out the optimum water temps.
I also bought the spin dryer which was a life saver.
Yes, my arms got pretty tired when I did marathon loads. While I am very grateful to have an electric washing machine to use again, you know what? For my delicate washables, the little Sputnik (Wonder Washer) is the best.
I suspect after enough years of cranking I am going to have to McGuyver a new handle and stand but I will cross that bridge when I get there.
(I also have the plastic plunger (breathing washer) and my trusty 5 gallon plastic paint bucket for bigger loads/no washer available. You get a workout and clean clothes in one!) And I bought the Mrs. Peggs Handy Line and use it every time I wash. I try to air dry as much as possible and you can fit a lot on one of those things.