WonderWash Portable Washing Machine

Compré esto para lavar productos femeninos reusables (toallas sanitarias, toallas desmaquillantes, …). Es muy fácil de usar y lava bien, aunque tarda un poco en drenarse.

After seeing so many positive reviews and videos from people who were trying to save money while helping the planet, I decided to give this a go. I really, really wanted to love this product. But unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me.

TL;DR version of review:
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It does do a basic wash of your clothes, but the construction of the device is questionable. Rating this three stars because the device gets out some but not all of the dirt, doesn’t seem like it’s built to last, and has many parts don’t even fit together correctly. Arguably, the axle is the most mechanically important component of the washer, since that’s the mechanism by which the whole thing works, but, unfortunately, the axle could not be securely positioned on my unit due to poorly constructed fittings. Also, if it matters to you, the wonder wash is, indeed, pink.

Oh, and, this doesn’t affect my rating, but if you were considering using this in an apartment, don’t just think about the money you might save. Also consider the time it will take to wash repeated loads, the space this will take up in your apartment (especially if you live in a city), and the space your drying rack will take up in your apartment. And if you’re doing a lot of loads, the whole laundry setup will be a permanent fixture. If you’re not doing a lot of loads, you’ll have to clear out space every time you’re doing laundry, and then move everything back when you’re done.

Depending on your situation and lifestyle choices, you may find that the time and space savings you get from going to the laundromat are worth more to you than the money saved from having your own manual washer.

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===== Long version of review: =====
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Before you read all the rest of this, I want to be clear in stating that I did look at the other reviews and online manuals for the wonder wash, so I am fairly certain that I assembled and used the machine correctly.

Assembly is pretty obvious even if you don’t look at the instructions, since there is basically only one configuration that makes sense for each part.

And when washing, I added the recommended amounts of (warm) water and detergent, turned for the recommended amount of cycles, and made sure to turn slowly enough to hear a “thunk” on each half turn to indicate that the water and clothes actually moved in the unit.

Good stuff:
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– The action of washing with the wonderwash does not take long (five minutes or less, if we only count the time spent cranking the barrel).
– It seems to at least partially clean laundry. The wash water was grey-ish and somewhat sudsy at the end of the wash cycle, so *something* is definitely cleaned from the clothes. But not everything. See the first point in “bad stuff” (below) for more on this.

Bad stuff:
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– It didn’t manage to clean out all the random floor crap picked up on my socks, and I still had to scrub them manually to get them totally clean. Some people claim this can clean their totally-soiled-from-outdoor-adventures jeans, but frankly I’m not seeing it. While I can imagine this cleaning off dirt, clay, and other such things which fall apart naturally in turbulent water, this isn’t going to do much for you if you have things like little fluffs or splinters that have wormed their way through the weave of your socks or sweaters. You’ll need proper agitation for that, not just clothes rubbing against other clothes and smooth plastic.
– The construction of the wonderwash parts wasn’t great. The wonder wash is basically a barrel that rotates along an axle supported by the stand. Two pins go on either side of the axle to prevent the barrel from slipping out. On my unit, the pins did not seem to fit quite right into the axle of the machine. Most irritatingly, the handle did not slide all the way onto the peg it was built for, which means that the pin for that side of the wonderwash could not be inserted.
– The entire thing slid from side to side in its frame while turning. This may have been because the pin did not go in all the way on one side, and could not be inserted at all on the other side due to the handle covering the pinhole.
– The top and bottom halves of the barrel are connected using tape. And the tape was damaged when I got my unit. I would guess that there is also some kind of adhesive on the join, but the fact that there needs to be tape at all is slightly worrying.
– If your kitchen sink has shelves next to it, you might not be able to use the wonderwash on your counter. It needs *at least* 20 inches/51 centimeters of clearance/height between your countertop and the bottom of your shelves. Unfortunately, I could not use it on my shelf for this reason.
– When placed in the bathtub, or on any other non-flat surface, the whole thing, including the frame, will move from side to side. The frame itself flexes to accommodate this, but I am concerned about how much stress the plastic can take with this much movement.
– When the frame flexes, the plastic inserts which hold the parts of the frame together sometimes pop out of their spots. I had to stop washing to replace the inserts several times. This made the process more frustrating and time consuming than necessary.

Annoying stuff:
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(which *did not affect my rating*, as most of this is either par for course if you’re signing up for a manual washer, or could be seen as a plus in some situations)
– Although washing in and of itself isn’t complicated or time consuming, the surrounding hassle of measuring out your clothes, measuring water, moving everything in and out of the washer, wringing or spin drying everything, and hanging everything up takes a long time. I’m sure this gets more efficient with practice, and I know it’s also exactly what you signed up for when you get a manual washing machine. But it’s even more time than I expected. It takes at least half an hour to go through the whole process for one load.
– You are pretty much required to buy a spin dryer (and possibly a drying rack) if you want to do your laundry with any level of efficiency. Doubly true if you can’t hang clothes outdoors and don’t want to damage your floors from the dripping.
– You need to rinse many times to get the soap out. One rinse won’t do it. Perhaps using a spin dryer to spin out soapy water before rinsing could help.
– The suction cups make it almost impossible to move the wonderwash from a flat, wet surface. And if you manage to lift one suction cup, another one has then gotten stuck and needs to be pried off again. This is a plus when actually rotating the barrel, but it gets really annoying when you have to transfer the thing from one countertop to another in order to drain it.

Confusing stuff:
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(which *did not affect my rating*, since this is mostly personal preference)
– It’s pink! If you’ve ever had some really old thing made of white plastic, and it turned a light yellow all over due to age, where you’re not sure if your lighting is bad or if it’s really just yellow, then that’s basically the color of this device. Except pink instead of yellow.
– The product seemed to be used. This isn’t really a problem to me in general, since it’s a washing machine and the whole thing is going to get cleaned out (over and over again) anyways, but I was still expecting something new.

Additional notes:
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(which *did not affect my rating*, but might be useful to you if you’re also a city dweller)

I live in an urban studio without an in-unit washer and dryer. The community laundromat costs $1.50 for washing, and $1.50 for drying. At that rate, I figured I could afford this washer ($35-45 depending on when you got it), a spin dryer ($100-200 depending on make and model), and a drying rack ($10-50 depending on how fancy it is and whether or not you have a Costco membership) that would pay themselves off after two years or so.

I personally only bought the wonder wash for now, because I wanted to first see if I would be willing to commit to manual laundry before making a significantly larger investment into a spin dryer. And now, I’m very glad that I didn’t take the full plunge.

I watched a lot of video reviews and demos of this washer and of wonderwash + spin dryer setups, and everything looked so easy and great. But most of the videos leave out the time it takes to move the whole setup around, drain water (or move the thing to over a sink/tub and flip over the dang washer to empty it from the top, as I did, being my impatient self), rinse multiple times (this is often edited out of videos), wring everything by hand or carefully arrange it in an optimal ‘donut’ configuration in the spin dryer, and finally hang everything up.

I realize that the whole process is more or less par for course if you’re going to do things manually, but I guess I just didn’t think hard enough about just how much effort and space everything would take, and how much that penalty would be compounded in a small urban dwelling. Maybe it would be reduced if it were as normal (and non-lease-breaking) to dry clothes on a rack outside the window in the US as it is in most other countries I’ve been to, but as it is, I have to use an indoor drying rack.

Doing everything in real life was so much of a hassle. This is especially true for me because I couldn’t do the laundry next to the kitchen sink due to the height of the barrel. So I had to put the machine in the tub, where the whole thing shook and started falling apart. I also had to kneel on the floor outside the tub and bend over to crank the barrel, which I can easily see becoming a major problem with repetition. Also, like I said, I don’t have a basement, garage, or outdoor area to do everything in, so I have to run back and forth in my little apartment to where I have the washer/spin dryer/drying rack stored and cannot do everything in one place.

To make it worse, it turns out that the laundry facilities I currently use can fit about three times as much clothes/other stuff in them compared to the wonder washer. So it takes three times as much effort as I described here to get one regular load done.

Although basically all of these little tasks were anticipated, at the end of the day, it was more trouble than I imagined. With all of this in consideration, along with the mechanical issues of the wonder wash unit I received, I think that paying $3 a load and just taking the elevator up and down a few floors is way more worth it than the trouble and space expense of washing and drying everything manually.

If you live in a place where the laundromat is exceptionally expensive or far away, or you just have enough space to keep a dedicated laundry area, then this might be right for you. But if you live in a small space with easy access to laundry facilities, then you might not find manual laundry to be worth doing. If you’re not sure, as I was, then just buy the wonder wash and try it by itself before you get the full kit. I guess in the worst case, you’ll return it, and someone else will get your unit, and write a review saying that their unit arrived used…

This is better than the giant salad spinner model of manual washer that I used to have.

It worked like a charm for a few months but now it’s starting to leak water out the spout section (even when the spout is not attached).

I’ve actually solved this issue by putting the whole thing in my bathtub instead of my countertop and I must say, it is fine.

The spout isn’t really that good for draining the water.

In order to rinse the clothes after washing with detergent, I have to take the clothes out, put them into a strainer and run water over them. Or sometimes I’ll soak them in a giant pasta pot.

Either way, it’s not a seamless solution.
Also, wringing out the clothes is inevitable.

Bottom line, you’re washing your clothes by hand.

It is what it is.

I like it, but it’s very time consuming.

It’s good as a backup to a laundromat.

I use it for delicates and workout clothes.

I can even fit an entire sheet in it.

Towels no.

My only complaint is that I overpaid by not waiting until the machine was less in demand. Other than that, it’s a great purchase and it’s *still* worth the every penny I paid. Came earlier than the shipping date, too. It was easy to assemble.

It’s light enough to lug around easily, does a good wash and winds up being a lot less work than slugging clothes off to the laundry room/shop once you get into the routine of it.

There’s a learning curve but I truly do not understand much of the complaining. It does as good a job on clothes as most commercial washers and since you can adjust what you are doing–better in many case– as well as adjust how you want to use your laundry products to suit your needs and how long you want your soak cycles to be. Hello, kitchen timer!

SOME TIPS ‘N’ TRICKS:

***If the crank is too difficult to turn then you have a water/clothes ratio problem.*** (I see this complaint here, a lot)
Either add more water or take out some clothes. I’m prehistoric with arthritis and I can wash a thin cotton double duvet cover in it, so young’uns have no excuse 😉 This will hold *5lbs* of clothes so you certainly can wash at least one pair of jeans. Make sure to use enough water to compensate for the weight when the jeans absorb water, so it will swish about freely. In this, I found the instructions included for the water ratios to be ‘way off unless you wanted to work out like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Pumping Iron”.

Swish the soap/bleach/stain remover, in. Then add your clothes. I like to crank 50-60 turns, leave it for 15 minutes to soak then crank another 50-60 turns before putting it in the spinner. I call this ‘my lazy way of getting the cleanest clothes with the least effort.’ Be careful with chlorine bleach and soaking because it can bleach unevenly.

Unless you want to double the job–as soon as you can afford it, get a spinner or wringer. 🙂

Also, you can soak your clothes in fabric softener after cranking for 15-30 rounds if you really want them to be soft and absorb the fragrance. Go play a video game or read or watch TV for 20-30 minutes while they absorb your fav scent and soften. Give another few cranks. Since you are soaking clothes in it, not just running it through like in a regular washer, you will go through a lot less fabric softener.

Keep a big car sponge handy for dribbles and wiping. It’s also good for drying out the barrel at the end of your loads. Put a rag or flat sponge under the drain pipe attachment because as you pull it in and out, there will be a bit of drippage. On your first try, best to keep a few big towels around as you get used to it. Better safe than sorry if you don’t batten down the lid properly when learning. After you get the hang of it, you’ll be fine.

The Drain Plug: I found this doesn’t stay attached to the drain hole so take it out before you wash/rinse. However, if you want good drainage then just pop it under your wet clothes in the bottom of the barrel when you want to drain and the drainage will work great.

If your place is like mine and there isn’t enough quite enough counter space to keep from banging the machine into the cupboards, you can try setting a big towel under a large board (to keep it from slipping while you crank) and putting the machine on top of the board to give you that extra inch of clearance away from the cupboard doors. This is also handy if that’s the reason you’re trying to bend over and do your laundry in the bathroom which I see a lot in videos. (That’s why I had to stop using a plunger type washer. Too much lifting wet clothes in the tub)

Using an old hose or kitchen tap shower hose to fill the tank rather than lifting jugs of water can also save you some arm and back strain.

You can save on soap and laundry products too because it doesn’t require much cleaning product when you can give your clothes a bit of a soak as well as washing.

Well, I hope that helps. I’ve been using it several times per week for almost a month now and I find it really is a simple though clever design for laundry once I figured out a few tricks to make it easy!