Wednesday, September 12, 2007

laundry, or not

I’m trying to find a good balance between doing too much laundry and owning too many synthetic running/biking clothes. This balance seems to be harder and harder to achieve as I run/bike more.

Some of you may have noticed (especially Hilary) that the specialty-wicking-drying-lightweight stuff starts smelling like a wild animal after just a few minutes of wear. In order to avoid doing laundry I’ve experimented with wearing these clothes for a couple (few) runs/rides between washings and airing them out in between, but that gets a little gnarly (even for me.)

At the same time, I don’t want to be doing laundry every week or more. So, I guess the only thing to do is get more clothes. But, then, who wants to have a giant pile of stink garments building up for two or three weeks?

And then of course, those clothes can get a little pricey (as I’m sure many of you have noticed, as well.) A “set” of these clothes might be between 30 and 50 dollars including socks, but not shoes. So, if you head out five times a week, and only want to do laundry every two weeks, and want to wear clean clothes every time, that’s a significant wardrobe investment.

Possible solutions: recyclable/disposable clothing, nudity, embracing the wild animal within…

2 comments:

Geoff said...

i like to do the quick handwash in the sink of my clothes that i run/bike in the most often, hang them up and they're good and dry by morning. can usually get away with no laundry for about 3 weeks doing this.

amidnightrider said...

I rinse my shirts with shampoo at work. Hang them on a tree, and by the end of the day they are "Prell Fresh".