This past summer your peripatetic COGgers enthused at length over the Scrubba, Australian-made Washing Machine in a Bag. Five-star rating: flat-out best performing, most useful product innovation we’ve seen in years. Anyone who wants clean clothing needs a Scrubba. For back up, if nothing else. Overnighting: trail, dorm, hostel, RV, hotel, boat, trailer, back-seat of your dad’s crew-cab? Ten minutes (max): clothes fresh as any automatic washing machine could make ‘em.
But our COG team testers reserved judgment on the Scubba Bag for white fabrics. Only white fabrics. Early wash loads showed slight but noticeable color transfers from the Scrubba’s lime-green, “dry” bag, coated-nylon exterior to white tee-shirts. As we admitted, our COG tests ranged well beyond the manufacturer’s suggestions as to detergent concentration and wash-load soak times.
Further testing, however, put our initial concern to rest…without reservation!
After six-straight weeks of forced nightly washings, our COG Scrubba cleaned clothes like a possessed launderette AND left no traces of color transfer whatsoever!
What happened between our first tests and this summer’s coursing after Aeneas? (Our team spent some time sailing the Mediterranean.)
Our COG team traveled 3000+ surface miles by ship and car. Long hours and many miles afoot produced heavily “used” clothing and little time for coin-ops along the way. COG’s Scrubba bag rendered service every night: two sets of underwear/person, three times/week, each. Jeans and R1 sweaters took to the wash-bag every three days. Our reporters averred their ensembles remained fresher throughout their six-week, death-march tour than at home, using their regular washer/dryer.
Particularly as to color transfer: our team’s Scrubba bag started to “break-in.” After three weeks, the white graphics printed along the bag’s side began fading. Then the lime-green bag took on the look of a life-jacket (PFD) left a couple summers on the dock, in direct sunlight. By this time the bag’s graphics were mere shadows (of themselves); the Scubba bag’s color dyes (i.e., the Scrubba product’s actual color) had totally stabilized. COG’s team washed white cottons, polyesters and the full array of white performance fabrics with no color leaching at all. Problem solved!
That is, the Scrubba’s performance improved the longer and harder it was used!
And that white, silk, Armani blouse? Our COG gal rinsed hers repeatedly in the Scrubba with a mild, silk-oriented solution: whiter and cleaner than ever!
Now COG’s only problem with the Scrubba? Who gets to keep it in their travel kit?
$64
