Travel must-have: The Scrubba Wash Bag

As people who travel a lot, we have learned that it pays to pack light.  No one ever brags about how much luggage they had to haul around on vacation, but ending up with no clothes to wear halfway through vacation is no one’s dream, either. 

At this point, we’ve gotten our packing down to a science and we bring only the essentials.  A big portion of this is planning on washing and rewearing clothing on long vacations so you don’t need a full new outfit each day.  While this might sound like the perfect plan, problems arise when you can’t find a good place to wash those clothing items {we’re talking about you, European showers and backwoods hiking trips} or you find yourself going through clothing faster than you expected.

Add in unpredictable and messy children to the equation and you can basically bet on running out of clothing before you can get somewhere to wash them.  As parents of two young children that love to go through multiple outfits in one day and have a history of creating their greatest laundry accidents while on the road, we’ve been looking for a solution that made laundry on the go easy.  And, hopefully one that didn’t involve spending hours of precious vacation time at Laundromats or spending time cleaning sinks and showers before you will even consider putting dirty clothing inside. 

The solution was the Scrubba Wash Bag, an Australian on-the-go laundry kit that is perfect for our adventures.  Hubby first heard about the Scrubba bag and immediately emailed me with one succinct sentence, “We NEED this.”  One look and I was in complete agreement, dreaming of if we had brought this on our European trips that we ended up utilizing ice buckets, large plastic bags, and good old paper cups to do our laundry. 

So, what IS The Scrubba?  Basically, a washboard in a bag.  More specifically, it’s a roll-top dry bag with a grippy surface and raised "washing nobules" inside that you can use to really wash your clothing, and it also includes a clear panel so you can see inside. 

All you need to clean your clothing is just a little water, some soap {laundry detergent is recommended, but in a pinch you can use hand soap, shampoo, camp soap, etc} and a place to hang the clothes when you’re done washing and you can skip the laundromat entirely. 

You start by filling the Scrubba with soiled items.  Even if you don't plan on doing laundry right away, the Scrubba bag still acts as a great wet/dirty bag.  Because who wants these muddy jeans rolling around with their dresses and trousers?

The Scrubba can hold quite a bit of clothing just for storage, but during cleaning you should only wash roughly 2 days worth of summer clothing or 1 day of cooler weather clothing to give it enough room to really scrub up well.  When you decide to wash your clothing, you start by adding a little bit of water and soap.

We always travel with a little bottle of Woolite and a plastic bag for “toxic clothes” as we call them.  So, with the Scrubba folding down to almost pocket size, it literally takes up no extra space in our luggage since we basically just replaced the disposable bag {which can leak and tear} with this heavy duty wet bag that is dual purpose and allows us to clean our clothing right inside. 

Once your water and soap are added, you simply roll the bag down a few times and clip it together.  Then you let the air out slowly so you can really feel the clothing through the bag. 

Now you're ready to scrub, which is really the fun part.  Clothing gets cleaner than traditional hand washing because of the internal washboard, and all the mess is contained in the Scrubba bag so you don't need a basin or bucket.  And, the best part is that you can actually watch the clothing get clean through the little see-through panel on the Scrubba bag.

Once your items are good and clean you simply rinse with fresh water until the soap is all removed {it only takes 30 seconds of scrubbing for a basic clean or 3 minutes for a washing machine quality wash, and you can even use the Scrubba to soak if necessary}.  In total, it took about 5 minutes to completely clean these jeans with the caked on dirt and grime from start to finish.  It really is that easy!

We’ve taken the Scrubba with us on two vacations now and I think we love it more every time we use it.  I mean, no one loves laundry, but this might be as close as it gets.  In particular, we really love the satisfyingly tactile feel and sound of the Scrubba that makes it a fun sensory project for kids.  Yeah, that’s right; I make my kids do laundry on vacation.  It’s only fair that the two making the most laundry do the most laundry, right? 

Really, I only have one suggestion for the Scrubba that would make it absolutely perfect: to screenprint the directions somewhere on the bag for easy reference.  While the instructions are easy enough to remember, it would be really nice to have the instructions right on the Scrubba bag somewhere so there was no second guessing yourself.

UPDATE: the new Scrubba design has the instructions screenprinted on the bag!  Doesn't this look awesome?

With many different road trips, camping and hiking adventures, and vacations planned this spring and summer, I know that the Scrubba will get a ton of use.  And, when we’re able to salvage a clothing catastrophe on the road, it’s going to be worth its weight in gold {and then some – it is pretty light}.  But, the Scrubba isn’t just for long trips and those with small children, it’s also great for swimsuits, beach gear and more.  Since it’s a great wetbag in its own right, it’s extremely practical for a variety of applications, with laundry just being one of them.   

The Scrubba retails for $59.95 right from TheScrubba.com.  Want a full laundry on-the-road kit?  Check out the Scrubba Traveler Kit for $99.95 that comes with a carry bag, a super absorbent towel and a portable clothes line!

Be sure and follow The Scrubba on Twitter, like The Scrubba on Facebook and check out their YouTube channel to see the Scrubba in action.

A big thank you to The Scrubba for sending a wash bag to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions are 100% ours.