First time? It takes about an hour.

Start to finish

1. Pick a washer that fits the load. Small is 5kg (one basket), medium is 8kg (a packed bag), extra large is 14kg (a doona, blankets or three baskets). One large wash beats two small ones on both time and money — $12 for an extra large against $6 twice over, and you only wait once.
2. Load it and add detergent. Bring your own, or buy a sachet from the vending machine for $2. There’s a refill station in the shop too. Go easy — too much detergent leaves clothes stiff and takes longer to rinse.
3. Note your machine number. Every machine is numbered. You’ll need that number at the kiosk — dryers run 9–22.
4. Pay at the kiosk — or from your own phone. Select WASH or DRY, enter the machine number, tap your card or phone. Prefer not to queue at the kiosk? Pay and start your machine from your phone instead, same machine numbers.
5. Press START on the machine itself. The kiosk unlocks it; the machine still needs the button.
6. Move it to a dryer, then fold. Dryers are sold by the minute, so put in a dollar at a time rather than overshooting. The steel tables down the middle are for folding.

How the dryers are priced

You don’t buy a “cycle” — you buy minutes. A dollar buys eight minutes of heat in a medium dryer, or six minutes in an extra large one. So $3 in a medium dryer is 24 minutes; $3 in an extra large is 18 minutes, but the drum is bigger and things tumble more freely, so a big load often dries faster there anyway.

• Shirts and light cottons: usually $2–$3 in a medium dryer.
• A full basket of towels or jeans: $4 or more, and don’t be shy about adding a dollar.
• A doona or blankets: the extra large dryer, checked halfway and turned over.

Adding time never resets anything, so start with less and top up. Every dryer has a lint filter — if the load feels slow to dry, the filter is the first thing to check.

How long it takes

A wash and a dry back to back is usually about an hour, though it depends on load size and how dry you want things. Plenty of people load a washer, walk to the shops and come back for the dryer. Every machine locks while it runs and the shop is on CCTV, but it’s a public place: take anything you’d hate to lose with you, and be back before your wash finishes so nobody is waiting on your machine.

Wash cycle time depends on how much you load into the machine, so we can’t give a fixed number — the kiosk shows the estimate for your load once you start. — once we have these the estimator above will show a live “done by” time.

Happy Hour, in one paragraph

50% off, 7pm–9pm Tuesday & Wednesday

Any machine you start in that window is half price. Enter the promo code at the kiosk before you pay and the discount comes off on the spot — there’s nothing to sign up for. It applies to washers and dryers alike, so a medium wash and $3 of drying that would normally cost $12 comes in at $6. If your week is flexible, it’s the one change that halves your laundry bill.

Worth knowing

• Coins or card — the machines take coins (change machine on site for notes), or pay at the kiosk with card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
• You can also pay and start a machine from your own phone, no kiosk queue.
• Happy Hour is 50% off, 7pm–9pm Tuesday & Wednesday. Enter the promo code at the kiosk.
• Don’t overfill a washer. Clothes need room to move or they come out still dirty.
• Check pockets before you load. Tissues in a washer ruin everybody’s day.
• Zip up zips and turn dark jeans inside out — kinder on the clothes and on the drum.
• Empty the dryer lint filter if it looks full. Your load dries faster and so does the next person’s.

Not fancy the trip? Use our laundry pick up and delivery service instead →