Take on a house sit of any length and the laundry question arrives on about the fourth day. You have a machine in front of you, it belongs to somebody else, and you have no idea what it does on any of its settings. Then at some point it may not run at all, and the situation changes again.
The machine is not yours to work out
This is the part worth settling before anything else. If the washer stops doing what it should, that is the owner’s matter to deal with, not a puzzle for you to solve while they are away.
Do not open anything, do not move it, do not take a panel off and do not try a sequence you read about somewhere. A guest who breaks something is a much bigger problem than a guest with dirty clothes.
Send a short, factual message. What you did, what happened, nothing more. Then stop thinking about the appliance and start thinking about the laundry, which is a separate question with an easy answer.
That separation is the whole of it. The machine may be stuck for weeks. Your clothes only need to be clean by the time you need them.
Ask while there is still somebody to ask
The best five minutes you will spend is a quick walk through the utility area before the owners go, while they are still standing next to you.
Ask which cycle they actually use, because almost everyone uses two settings out of twelve. Ask where the detergent is kept and whether you should use theirs or your own.
Ask whether anything is off limits. Some households have a rule about a particular item or a particular machine, and it is far easier to hear it now than to guess later.
Ask what they would like you to do if something stops working, and get a name or a number for it. Having that already written down turns an awkward moment into a two line message.
Doing laundry on a house sit without leaving a mark
Use the settings they use. This is not the moment to improve anyone’s routine or to try a cycle nobody in the household has selected in three years.
Wash your own things separately from anything of theirs you have used. Your clothes are yours to sort as you like. Their towels and bedding are better handled in their own load on a straightforward setting.
Use less detergent than you think, not more. Excess is the most common way a guest leaves a trace, and a house with a machine you do not know is not the place to experiment with dosing.
Never leave a wet load sitting in a drum when you go out. In a warm house that is a smell by the evening, and it is the smell the owners come home to.
A short house sit of a few days often needs no washing at all. A longer one always does, and it is worth doing it deliberately rather than at midnight the day before they return.
You brought less than you think you did
People pack for a stay based on its length and then underestimate it by a third. Two weeks of clothing is a large bag, and most people arrive with ten days of it at best.
That gap is what produces the panic load. Work out on the first evening how far your bag actually goes, and mark the day you will need to wash something.
If the stay is long, you are better off washing early and often in small amounts than waiting until the suitcase is empty. A small load in an unfamiliar machine is a low risk way to find out how it behaves.
Take the opportunity to find out before you need it. The first load you run should be something you do not mind waiting an extra day for, not the clothes you need tomorrow.
You are minding the house as well as staying in it
A house sit usually comes with animals, plants or both, which puts a limit on how long you can be out at once.
That limit is worth knowing before you plan anything. A dog that is fine alone for two hours sets the shape of the afternoon more firmly than any machine does.
If you do need to wash away from the house, go in the window you already have rather than creating a new one. Most sits have a gap in the middle of the day that is long enough.
Animals also generate laundry of their own. Hair on throws, a muddy dog on a pale rug, a cat that has decided a bed is now its own. Deal with those as they happen rather than in a heap at the end.
Leaving it the way you found it
Work backwards from the return date. Whatever bedding and towels you have been using need to be washed, dried and put back, and that takes longer than one evening.
Start that two days out, not the morning of. If something does not dry in time you still have a day in hand, and a damp set of sheets folded into a cupboard is the one thing nobody forgives.
Fold and put things back where they came from rather than in a neat pile on a chair. Take a photo of the linen cupboard at the start if you think you will not remember.
If the machine did stop working while you were there, leave a short written note as well as the message you sent. People come home tired and messages get lost.
Common questions about house sit
Should I use the owners detergent or bring my own?
Ask before they leave. Most people are happy for you to use theirs and will say so. If nobody mentioned it, bringing your own is the easier choice and leaves nothing to discuss afterwards.
The washer has stopped running. What should I do?
Message the owners with what happened and leave the appliance alone. Do not open it, move it or attempt anything. Then wash elsewhere so your clothes and their linen are dealt with either way.
How much laundry should I expect to do on a house sit?
Roughly one load a week for one person, plus a final load of bedding and towels before you go. A stay under five days often needs nothing until the end.
Is it rude to wash their sheets before I leave?
The opposite. Washing the bedding and towels you used is the single most appreciated thing a guest does, as long as everything is properly dry before it goes back in a cupboard.
The Phoenix part
Phoenix is dry, and dry is the one thing entirely in your favour here. Laundry that would sit damp for a day somewhere humid is finished quickly in this air, which makes the last few days of a stay much easier to plan.
The heat is the other half of it. In a house closed up against a hot afternoon, a load left in the drum turns sour faster than it would almost anywhere else, so the rule about never leaving wet laundry sitting matters more here than the owners may have thought to mention.
Dust is the local soil. Fine grit rides in on the wind, settles on everything near a door or an open window, and works its way into fabric without ever looking like dirt. Throws, rugs and pet bedding pick it up steadily through the season.
The water is hard, which means detergent goes further than you expect and rinses out less readily. If you are unsure how much to use in a machine you do not know, use less. In this water, too much is far more visible on dark clothing than too little.
If the machine there is out
When a washer in a house you are minding stops running, your laundry and theirs can both be handled somewhere else in one visit.
The machines at our self-service laundry on West Camelback Road hold enough water and turn a large enough drum to take a full set of household bedding in one load rather than forcing it through in pieces
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
On a house sit the washer belongs to somebody else, so treat it as theirs. Ask before the owners leave which cycle they use, where the detergent lives and what they want done if something stops. If the machine does stop, send a short factual message and leave it alone rather than opening or moving anything. Wash your own clothing separately from their linen, use less detergent than you think, and never leave a wet load in the drum in a warm house. Start the final bedding and towels two days before the return so everything is dry and back where it came from.
WaveMAX Phoenix is at 1615 W Camelback Rd, STE 101, easy to reach from Phoenix and the surrounding area. If you have a load that will not fit at home, call us at 480-284-4001.