Doing the Wash the Hard way

Some of my favorite memories are connected to Wash Day... as a military brat we lived in base housing for a short time in New Jersey. There was a huge courtyard surrounded by four apartment buildings. Most days the courtyard was a gathering place for moms and a play area for kids, but on Wash Day the courtyard was transformed into a sea of multicolored laundry flapping in the breeze. There were no bikes allowed on wash day and the kids were supposed to find other places to occupy their time, but of course, the best place in the world for a tea party is under a canopy of freshly washed sheets!

A little hummer helps me with the laundry.

 In the Zona Maya, Yucatan I hung laundry in the sultry heat with a friend as we caught up on news. On a breezy hilltop between Waxhaw and Monroe N.C., I hung laundry with my dearest  friend, silently shaking and pinning, careful not to break the enchantment of  birdsong, breeze, sun and the smell of freshly washed clothes... Then there was learning to do laundry in the rain forest of Costa Rica, where Wash Day was an all day occupation. There the clothes were never hung out in the sun, but were hung under cover,  since it rained even when the sun is shining. A strong breeze blew on our mountain, but there was so much moisture in the air that getting clothes dry was a real challenge. So I would spend all day going down the line of clothes, testing for "dry enough" to take off the line, then immediately fold it and put it in a snap top tote to keep it dry.

These days Wash Day is at our cottage in Waxhaw, N.C. Here I  hang laundry off the back deck on a line that stretches from the back corner of the house to a spot way up in a tree out in our woods. It is not as exotic as Wash Day in foreign lands or as dreamlike as hanging clothes with my bestie on a hot summer's day, but it has it's own kind of magic. The birds sing and the trees whisper to me as the breeze ruffles their leaves. Here butterflies flit from flower to flower on the buddleia bushes in the laundry garden. An occasional male anole will scurry along the railing, pausing to show off his bubble gum pink dewlap before reaching the rose trellis. From there he can keep an eye on me without worrying about Skittles, our cat. Yep, I love Wash Day...


I have lived in places where the wash was done in the river, beating clothes clean on the rocks, wringing out the water by hand and spreading them on bushes and other vegetation to dry. I have also lived where the appliances don't speak English and don't operate like American appliances and not being able to get clothes dry meant they would sour or smell musty. When we moved to Sabalito, Costa Rica, it took me awhile to successfully get the clothes both clean and dry in the same day. In the meantime we were having to wear damp, mostly dirty clothes... I felt like a homemaking failure, but before long I learned from my mistakes and we were cleaner and drier. 

In Costa Rica, "The Bodega" as we called it, served many functions. It was a potting area for plants, a respite from the equatorial sun for this fair skinned gringo, a place to eat lunch out of the rain and most importantly the covered area where we tried to get our clothes dry.

A grid down situation may require it to be someone's full time job to keep the clothes clean; depending of course on how many people they are washing for. It could actually take two people for some parts of the tasks, like wringing pants and towels to get enough water out of them that they will dry in one day. It will be frustrating and time consuming, a task that nobody really wants to own, but if someone doesn't know how to do laundry "the hard way", everyone will be sorry. Much like any other aspect of "rustic" living, figuring out before hand what works best will reduce stress and save time, energy and drama later.

Some clothes are just too much trouble to launder by hand, like blue jeans... You can work yourself to death trying to get a pair of jeans washed and dried.  As an experiment try washing and drying a pair of really dirty jeans completely by hand; it will cure you from choosing heavy clothing for your SHTF wardrobe. Your knuckles will be raw, the jeans won't be clean and they will take two days to dry, if wrung out by hand. If your first experience washing jeans were in a grid down situation, you would probably end up having to wear them damp and dirty, adding to the angst and frustration of an already difficult situation. Believe me, it is miserable to have to do heavy labor or a lot of walking in damp, smelly, dirty pants. There are many light weight durable options on the market today, please pass on the blue jeans when selecting clothes for a  gird down situation, since you are likely to be cleaning clothes by hand.

When water, time and other resources are thin in the ground, everyone will have to resign themselves to wear the same clothes for as long as possible. While in Costa Rica we had work clothes that we wore long past the time they failed the sniff test, (for these clothes it was time to wash them when they were so dirty they stood alone or we were all trying to stay up wind from each other...) We would come in from the farm sweaty and really dirty, remove our clothes on the veranda and hang them under cover next to the knee high rubber boots, to air out in the breeze.  We would change into our "around the house" clothes after washing up. These clothes stayed cleaner since they weren't worked in and were washed when they failed the sniff test. We changed under things daily but wore everything else for probably a week before washing. I know it sounds unpleasant, but it took so long to do laundry that we had to make a choice: do things that way or sacrifice a pair of hands on the farm to have the luxury of clean clothes every day.

Over the years I have learned some things that help to get laundry clean with or without modern conveniences. Probably the most useful tip I can give is to put the soiled clothes on to soak the night before Wash Day. This gives the fibers time to become saturated and have a chance to release the soil. It will save a lot effort when scrubbing. I would suggest that you skip the handy dandy, plunger washer thingamabob... they don't work very well or last very long. Instead find a real live washboard. It will save your knuckles and you will have a better chance of getting your clothes clean. 

Soap can actually do more harm to laundry than good. Soap is used as a surfactant, to help soil release from the clothing. But if not rinsed very well, soap left in the clothes can irritate the skin and will cause them to get dirty faster. Since water conservation may be an imperative in less than optimal circumstances, rinsing clothes may be a luxury you can't afford. In which case you may have to forego soap altogether. It that situation, soaking and scrubbing is the best thing that can be done to make sure the clothes get clean. 

If you have enough water to allow rinsing, shave a small amount of a Fels Naptha soap with a vegetable peeler or small knife. Put the soap slivers into a cup of water and let it dissolve, then pre-treat really soiled areas and let sit for 1/2 hour or so. After treating the stains, put the all the clothes onto soak and swish the treated clothes around in the water. This action will put enough soap in the wash water to help float out the oils and dirt, but won't add so much soap to the wash that it doesn't rinse clear.

 It is possible to make lye soap, but soap making is tricky even with a lye calculator. If you don't store lye in your preps, you will need to make lye from wood ashes, which is risky business and will not give you a consistent result. If you are thinking about making lye soap, you will need to store all the ingredients needed for making soap in your preps. It would be prudent to practice your soap making skills now too, there is a lot to learn and it could take a few failed batches to get the hang of it.

Whether I am washing in the machine or by hand I pre-soak my clothes to reduce the amount of detergent I need to use and the amount of scrubbing that is necessary to get clothes clean. Ialso add about 20 drops each of eucalyptus and lemon essential oils to the soaking clothes. The essential oils kill odor causing bacteria that may be hiding in the fibers. 

In a grid down situation, if you have the luxury of enough water to use soap and rinse the clothes, then adding  1/4 cup of white vinegar to the rinse water will make line dried clothes much softer. In no soap situations, just add the vinegar to the wash water right before you remove the clothes. Swish the clothes around, pushing them under and lifting them up out of the water a few times to get the vinegar worked in.

To get your whites white, soak whites in boiling water until the water cools, then wash with just the tiniest amount of soap, (or none at all). When it is time to dry them, spread them out on the grass or bushes. The chlorophyll in the plants will interact with the sun, naturally whitening your whites and sanitizing the fabric. It is really pretty amazing how white this will get your whites!

Next comes the hard part... Once the clothes are removed from the water they must be wrung out before they are hung to dry. When we lived the Philippines, clothes had to be hand wrung before drying. In Costa Rica we had a centrifuge spin the water out of the  clothes. Either way was a lot of work and required hauling heavy wet clothes out of a wash tub, soaking yourself in the process and then using arm power to wring or spin the water out of sodden clothes. Hand wringing clothes is hard on the hands and the clothes. It is definitely worth the money to have a hand crank wringer if the budget allows.

 A hand crank mop bucket wringer (not the squeeze and pull type) will serve for light weight items but won't work on full sized towels or jeans.

Finally, we get to the easy part, hanging the clothes in the sun and breeze to dry. I hang my clothes on a pulley line that stretches from the corner of our house to high up on a tree at the edge of the woods. I can stand on the deck and hang clothes. Then pull the line to transport the laundry from where I stand to hang out in the open air and catch a breeze and dry. I hang clothes year round on days when it isn't raining. Which this year means my seldom used dryer got a real work out, since it rained nearly every day for months!

Peg pins, hinge pins and D rings are my laundry drying staples. The D rings are placed between sections of clothing to keep the laundry line from sagging under the weight of the clothes. I usually put a D ring on after 3 pairs of pants or towels and after 5 lighter weight items.

In an emergency situation, what clothes look like when they come off the line is of little importance, but the rest of the time it is important that clothes come off the line looking good enough to wear. By taking a few extra seconds to prepare the item for drying, it is possible to have clothing look as good coming off the line as as it does when dried in a clothes dryer (unless you let the clothes sit and wrinkle in the dryer, then line dried clothes will look better from the git go!)

Before hanging, each piece of clothing should be given a vigorous shake/snap or two to loosen the wrinkles then gently pull into shape so that sleeves, pant legs and edges of towels are the proper shape. This is particularly important to do with towels, since if they are not given a few good snaps before they are hung, they will feel like sandpaper when dry. The shaking and shaping causes the loops in the towels to separate and become fluffier, making the towel much softer when dry.

I dry dresses, blouses with no collar and delicate items on hangers in the shade of the porch so that the colors don't fade.  When hanging shirts, the collars should be unbuttoned and unfolded, polo shirt collars should be unfolded and straightened. Hang the item upside down on the line with just enough folded over the line to hold it in place with a pin. Make sure that the cloth under the pin is smooth so that it doesn't leave wrinkle marks.

 Slacks and jeans should be hung upside down by the hem; the pockets turned inside out to make sure they dry completely. It is important not to crowd things on the line, but to give each piece just a little breathing room so that they dry uniformly.

Machine washed clothes will usually dry in an hour or two , heavier items like towels and jeans may take longer. But if the clothes are washed and wrung out by hand, it will take most of the day on a good breezy day to get heavy items like towels and pants dry so start early. Also make sure you get your clothes off the line before it starts to cool off in the evening, if you leave them until almost dark before taking them in, they will begin to absorb moisture from the cooling air.

I fold the clothes as they come off the line, so that they do not have a chance to get wrinkled like they would if  they were dropped unfolded into the laundry basket. I seldom have to iron anything and if I do it is usually just a quick spot press to get rid of a clothes pin mark. 

Nothing smells better than laundry hung in the fresh air and sunshine to dry, but if you want to scent your clothes, spray them lightly just before they are dry with a few drops of your favorite essential oil in a small spray bottle of grain alcohol. The alcohol evaporates quickly leaving only the scent of the essential oils behind. I also like to pick lavender and other herbs from my garden, dry them and put them in organza draw string bags to be layered with my clothes in the drawers and linen closet. It will impart a lovely scent and help deter cloth eating critters.

Like all things Prepper, it is best to have practiced the skills you may need in hard times until they are second nature. Hopefully long before you need them! Doing the wash by hand is no exception. The experience of doing laundry totally by hand is eye opening... why don't you give it a try and tell what you learn from the experience. Comments are always enjoyed and appreciated!

I hope to see you again soon!  As always... Elle

P.S. Here are a few thoughts on choosing clothing for a grid down situation...
Choosing clothing for a grid down scenario is counter-intuitive, one would think thick, tough and durable, when actually clothing should be lightweight, breathable, quick drying and durable. Cotton is a no-no, it takes forever to dry and during inclimate weather, cotton clothing can actually be dangerous. When it gets wet it stays wet and cold; sapping your body heat and paving the way hypothermia or illness. It is also heavy when wet and will chafe and get musty leading to skin irritation and fungus. If it is cold, choose silk long johns and wear multiple layers, but stay away from heavy fabrics.  Rip-stop polyester hiking pants work great. Still Waters prefers the kind that zip off at the knees to make shorts so he can get all season wear out of them. Other clothes should be versatile and made of lightweight, durable fabrics preferably in neutral colors that don't show stains and will blend in with the surroundings when outside. Underwear for ladies should be nylon or silk with a cotton crotch. Believe me it is unpleasant to have to wear cotton undies that didn't quite get dry. For men there are less underwear options, but boxers sure dry a lot faster than tidy whities... Merino wool socks for hiking are great. They breathe, are comfortable and easy to dry.  I like toe sock if I am walking for any distance because they eliminate the problem I have of getting blisters on my toes where they rub together. A selection of bandanas and keffiyeh are a good addition to the grid down wardrobe. The bandana can serve a multitude of purposes and the keffiyeh will protect the neck and head from exposure to the elements while helping to regulate body temperature.