Laundry day just got easier

By Angeliz Venter

While I was pregnant, everyone kept telling me statements similar to “You will never have time for yourself again” and I remember every time I heard that, I thought it can’t possibly be THAT bad, babies just eat and sleep right? WRONG! All babies do in the beginning is eat, sleep, poop and repeat, but this little routine takes up all of your time as a mom, especially in the beginning!

Apart from that another thing I didn’t believe, is that babies have a lot of laundry, because how can such a tiny human have more laundry than us adults? Very easy, when they eat, they spit up, when they poop or pee, it sometimes leaks and so forth. To add to this, we decided to use cloth nappies part-time and this amounts to +-15 dirty nappies a day and the inserts and booster that goes inside them AND we are using reusable wipes… Needless to say, we have A LOT of laundry now and needed some help fast! Luckily, I got a Spindel, just before I gave birth! You might wonder, what is a Spindel? Ultimately, it’s a specialist dryer using only spin power, instead of heat, to remove excess water from your laundry. This allows laundry to dry faster, even indoors on a rainy day or cold winters day. By removing excess moisture, it eliminates the damp odours which can dry into fabrics and especially cloth nappies (as you can imagine). Spindel uses centrifugal force and spins at 2800rpm (whereas your average washing machine only uses 1400rpm). By using these high speeds up to ½ litre of extra water may be removed from your wet laundry. The amount of water is much higher when spinning items like AIO’s (all in ones) and the absorbent parts of cloth nappies, along with towels and blankets. Most excess water will be removed within 2-3 minutes and this directly saves you time and electricity, because you don’t have to tumble dry your items after washing and it also doesn’t have to dry in the sun the whole day and get damaged. It’s been proven that Spindel uses 1% of the energy consumed by your tumble dryer. You can run over 65 cycles in the Spindel with just one unit of electricity (i.e., 1 kWh), whereas one tumble dryer cycle alone can consume over 3 units of electricity!

Never mind the sustainability and environmental benefits of using a Spindel, one of the most important benefits for me was the fact that by using only spin power, the detergent residues are also removed from the items. These would otherwise dry into fabrics if you were using a traditional tumble dryer. Detergent and fabric softener residues have been linked to skin irritations and allergies, so by removing them, Spindel helps ensure the fabrics are softer and safer against you and your babies’ skin.

The Spindel is available in two sizes, the 4.5kg and the 6.5kg, we have the 6.5kg and I would highly suggest getting the bigger size as a mom, to save you extra time, by being able to add more items into it per cycle.One thing to keep in mind is that the Spindle, even the 6.5kg is relatively small (which is a good thing, because when your baby arrives, your house is suddenly smaller as well) and you won’t fit a full load from your washing machine into it. I suggest when your load is done in the washing machine, put the bulkier and heavier items into the Spindel first, so that they can dry faster.

Ultimately using our Spindel, even if it is just for the cloth nappies, has helped me a lot and especially because I gave birth in the winter, the nappies and clothing took so much longer to dry and I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck without a clean nappy the next time I change my baby!

If you want more information about the Spindel, you can visit their website www.spindel.co.za or email info@spindel.co.za, they are also very responsive on social media! To purchase a Spindel, which I know you do, you can order from either Tafelberg and Yuppiechef And also online at www.takealot.com