I will be in Italy for two months and will do most of our laundry in motel sinks and several times i know i will have to go to a laundromat...BUT if i get several chances to have the laundry sent out for someone else to do, how do i give the following directions in Italian?
Wash: Cold water, gentle cycle, no bleach
Dry: Tumble dry low
Hope there is help out there and thanks ahead too...Shelly
I suggest taking clothes that don't require special instructions. Good luck.
I think Michael is right. We generally take two-week trips each summer, and plan to have our laundry done halfway through. Usually we plan a hotel that does it midway, but sometimes we'll go to a coin laundry nearby for a few hours during the late afternoon...and we've had some of our nicest conversations with locals watching the clothes tumble! RS does a good job in his guidebooks pointing out who does laundry at their hotel, and nearby coin laundries. Still, every time we do have something ruined, it seems (usually a shirt). Khakis, jeans, sweatshirts, tee-shirts always seem fine. If we do have something nice, we do that on our own in the hotel, and send the rest.
Linda, we DO have those 'internationally recognised symbols' - BUT they sometimes come with a little booklet to explain them. Seriously. And thank goodness, because for the most part they don't make any sense. They are really weird...
And Shelley, I'd forget about anything needing 'tumble dry low'. Most of those dryers could cook a pizza in 5 minutes!
We spent 5 weeks in Europe, including Italy, in July and August during an awful - for the record books - heat wave. We hand-washed everything...Maybe go over your clothing again - you'd hate to have to send something out and have it ruined and unwearable. Or, just take some wine (!) and do it yourself at a laundromat; perhaps take the damp clothes back to your room and hang to dry.
Over this side of the Pond our clothes have labels with internationally recognised cleaning symbols sewn in to them. Is this not the case for clothes sold in the USA? Whether the person doing your laundry bothers to read them is another matter!
When I travel, I bring clothes that can be machine washed. I also make sure the color scheme is simular so I do not have to do 2 separate washes. Most of the time, I let the hotel wash a pair or 2 of my jeans (I travel in winter) and a few shirts. I wash my under clothes in the sink and hang them on the handy towel warmers that are in some hotels & pensions. I have gone to a laundry mat once to do a full load and it was not too time consuming. We were in Bruge, close to the windmills so we were entertained waiting for our things to dry. Keep your clothes in the following categories: machine washable and simular colors and you simply won't have to worry.
Find one article of your clothing that has the right symbols for what you want, and point that out to the person at the counter. Indicate that you want it all done the same, in one load. You should be able to do this with simple Italian, gestures, and a smile.
One caveat: when we had our laundry done in Varenna, they would not take lingerie. I think it had to do with not wanting to be responsible for damage to lacy delicates and expensive bras.
Lola, in theory your suggestion would work. But in practice... :-)
And just to add to your worries, there was one time we used a bundle service at a laundromat. We took our clothes there in a pillowcase. They asked us if we wanted them dried as well as washed. We said yes. But they didn't ask about folding. So when we picked up our laundry, we found that they had taken everything out of the blast-furnace hot dryer and crammed it all back into the pillowcase. I tell you, those wrinkles didn't come out until the next time those clothes were washed.
Thank you all....from your results i think i'll try to launder everything myself in a sink or go to a laundromat and take things out of dryer quick so I don't have to wear oven mitts!! Great help....Shelly
