We Tested the $40 Portable Washer That Cleans UConn Coach Dan Hurley’s Lucky Undies

Before the Hurleys’ older son gave his father the East Doll washer as a Christmas gift in 2022, Andrea’s on-the-go laundry routine was a more DIY affair.

“I actually found a collapsible bucket on Amazon, and I would bring this bucket around with powdered Tide [her detergent of choice at home] in a little Ziploc and just do everything by hand,” she explained. “It would take forever, and because [powdered detergent] is so hard to get out by hand, I’d have to rinse everything a million and 10 times.”

The East Doll machine is simply a collapsible bucket with a motor and agitator built into its base. Clothes, water, and detergent go in the top—in that order, according to the instruction booklet, although Hurley will sometimes start a cycle with just water and Tide liquid laundry detergent to allow the detergent to disperse before putting the clothes in. (The instructions do not state how much detergent to use, so she now travels with single-use packets, which also avoids the in-luggage powder spills she occasionally experienced before.)

To help prevent splashing and overflow, the machine comes with a lid and is marked with a maximum-fill line. The whole thing operates via a simple, one-button interface: Press it, and the machine runs a 10-minute cycle. A drainage port at the bottom of the bucket allows you to empty the water out when it’s done. If you wish, you can refill the bucket with fresh water and run it without detergent as a rinse cycle.

Hurley (who admits that she’s “a freak about washing clothes”) runs several wash cycles before draining and refilling the machine for a few rinse cycles. In between cycles, she adds a little elbow grease.

“The machine does a good job, but you have to put the work in to make sure,” she explained. “Sometimes I’ll do a little old-fashioned rubbing the clothes together to give it a head start, and then it does its thing. Same with rinsing—after the wash, I’ll run stuff under the [faucet] and then put them back in and do the rinse cycles. It’s obviously more work than a regular washing machine, but it has saved me so much time and aggravation from my life.”

All of that may seem like overkill—but like Hurley, we’ve found that this machine needs the help.

After purchasing two of our own East Doll Portable Washing Machines and using them to clean a blouse, a lightweight pair of pants, a pair of boxer briefs, and three pairs of socks, here’s our assessment: If occasionally laundering a couple of lightly used garments is all you ask of the East Doll machine, it can do the job.

“Underwear, even on a stinky person, is not going to have much dirt,” says staff writer Andrea Barnes, who wrote our guide to the best washers and dryers and has tested all manners of stains in washing appliances. “If only underwear and socks are being washed, I would say the machine is perfectly acceptable for keeping luck alive.”

However, when we ran a pretreated stain strip through the East Doll machine, the results were underwhelming. “One cycle barely lifted a thing. Two cycles didn’t do much. A third cycle lifted a bit more,” she says.

Because of this, we agree with the extra steps that Andrea Hurley told us she takes to get her husband’s clothes as clean as possible.

“For underwear and socks, I would say [to run] two or three cycles and then rinse as needed, either in the machine or in the sink,” Andrea Barnes says. “I would also guess that adding detergent and water and running a cycle before adding anything to the machine would distribute the detergent well and perhaps make a bigger difference with dirt and body-oil removal.”

Also, don’t overdo it on the detergent; adding more in the hopes that it might compensate for the machine’s less-than-ideal cleaning power won’t help and will just leave you with more product to rinse out. Our staff writer’s advice: “A half-tablespoon is plenty of soap for this thing. You could probably use even less.”

According to its instructions, the East Doll machine can accommodate a mere 500 grams of clothing and other washable items per load. If one pair of boxer briefs plus one pair of socks equals one unit of laundry, that means you can run only about three or four units at a time (with a little wiggle room depending on the size and material of each item). Unless they’re especially small and lightweight, a single pair of jeans is likely to exceed that limit. An entire outfit? Almost certainly not.

We also have concerns about the machine’s longevity. On Amazon, we counted at least a half-dozen customer reviews dating back to 2022 in which buyers complained that it stopped working after a month or six months or a year. A few more commenters claimed that the machine failed to work straight out of the box.

Hurley told us that hers has started acting a touch finicky: “Not that long ago, I pressed the button, and it wasn’t going on. I’m not going to lie; I nearly had a heart attack. I just kept pressing that button so hard and banging the side of the thing, and it finally turned on.”

According to its Amazon listing, the East Doll machine is “suitable for apartment, camping, RV, [and] travel.” However, considering how little laundry it can handle, how many times you may need to run it for an effective clean, and the fact that it might go kaput on you, we’ve concluded that it may be better to think of the East Doll machine as a viable option only when you’re in need of a short-term laundry fix.

One Wirecutter staffer, for example, says that a friend once purchased a similar bucket-style washer when she was living in a walk-up apartment with basement laundry facilities while staying at home with her toddler and pregnant with her second child. Because she couldn’t physically handle carrying her toddler and her laundry to the basement simultaneously, and she also couldn’t leave her child alone in the apartment, a portable washer allowed her to get some laundry done on a regular basis.

If your place doesn’t have in-unit laundry, and you’re looking for a more long-term option, though, you might consider a compact washer on casters that can hook up to a sink or tub faucet.

Hurley has likewise recommended the East Doll machine only on rare occasion. “I know somebody whose washer broke, and the repairman wasn’t going to be able to get the part he needed for a couple weeks,” she explained. In such a temporary circumstance, the washer “can do the small stuff you need to get done” without your bearing the expense of sending laundry out or the time commitment of visiting the laundromat.

If you’re not skeeved out by the thought of using a hotel-room sink when you’re traveling, we believe you’d be better off packing our favorite hand-washing detergent, Soak, which delivers a gentle clean and doesn’t even require rinsing.

Of course, in an extraordinary circumstance, when back-to-back championships and long-held superstitions are on the line—and the only alternative is donning day-old skivvies—we’re rooting for the East Doll machine to pull through for its one shining moment.

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Catherine Kast.