Posted: 4/21/2014 12:28:41 PM EDT
| If I may ask, how do you plan to do laundry in the event of a long-term power outage? |
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Quoted: Buy a new bathroom plunger, and keep it on hand to use with a bucket and laundry detergent. You'll have to wring out the clothes the old hard way by hand. Then repeat with plain water for the rinse. It's the old fashioned washing by hand method. You could also watch the yard sales and Craigslist for old wringer washers. I have also seen washers with small gas engines and/or pulleys for the "farm engine" from back in the day. Kind of a rare bird, though.
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Buy a new bathroom plunger, and keep it on hand to use with a bucket and laundry detergent. You'll have to wring out the clothes the old hard way by hand. Then repeat with plain water for the rinse. It's the old fashioned washing by hand method. Yep - but instead of a 'bucket' we have a couple of 15 gallon plastic tubs - when not used for washing clothes are very useful for the kids to store their outdoor toys in. |
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Part of this comes down to dealing with things a bit differently. I like clean socks and underwear but would let the shirts and pants go a bit longer than normal if needed. Simply airing some stuff out can help as well. I do not want to get back to the old days when laundery and baths were once a week things and they did not have enough clothes to have new stuff for each day of the week sometimes. Depending on what I am doing I don't care to let jeans go for several days. But one good day working on equipment, yardwork, and messing around can make that one pair of jeans pretty ripe at times. For a week I have enough clothes to not care. 2 weeks would be similar but would have to think a bit harder. Start messing around with a month timeline in my brain and I gaurantee I would probably spend some time with a couple 5 gallon buckets and a clothesline every couple nights in order to play catchup. |
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Part of this comes down to dealing with things a bit differently. I like clean socks and underwear but would let the shirts and pants go a bit longer than normal if needed. Simply airing some stuff out can help as well. I do not want to get back to the old days when laundery and baths were once a week things and they did not have enough clothes to have new stuff for each day of the week sometimes. Depending on what I am doing I don't care to let jeans go for several days. But one good day working on equipment, yardwork, and messing around can make that one pair of jeans pretty ripe at times. For a week I have enough clothes to not care. 2 weeks would be similar but would have to think a bit harder. Start messing around with a month timeline in my brain and I gaurantee I would probably spend some time with a couple 5 gallon buckets and a clothesline every couple nights in order to play catchup. Grid down also means (for those on city water) no water. Hand carrying is tough work not to mention storage. Just a thought ............ |
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I have a plunger-like device...forget where I got it. It is SPECIFICALLY made for manual laundry chores. Plastic end witha baffle. 1" hole in bucket lid. Easy peasy. Wife has was 'delicates' in it and they turned out fine. Redman PS here it is-http://www.bestdryingrack.com/images-new/clothes-washer.jpg Emergency essentials and lehmans sells them.......there called mobile washers and work awesome |
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Link no work |
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Washing a load of laundry doesn't require much more than half an hour's worth of AC power.
Even a modest-sized generator produces plenty of power to operate your average clothes washer. So, we're not talking about a huge amount of generator fuel consumed here - A gallon of gasoline is probably plenty to do half a dozen loads. Naturally, if you're also using a well pump to supply water to the clothes washer, your generator fuel consumption will increase significantly (twofold, perhaps?). As for clothes drying - Well, that's what God invented clotheslines for... 
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If not, it's hand scrubbing and clotheslines until the power comes back on or until we can make a plunger and wringer setup.
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OK, this is not going to be a popular post with many. When you are talking long term and "lights out" there hasn't been any improvement in over two centuries on how to do clothes. Unless you live alone and only have two sets of clothes, things like "Wonder Wash" etc. manual agitation machines are a gimmick. They are quickly overwhelmed by any volume at all. Think for a minute the volume of clothes you wash now and even cut it in half then think of doing it in a five gallon bucket?
Its popular in this modern society to think before widespread use of electricity that people went dirty and wore the same clothes all the time but that wasn't the way it was especially in the 20th century. People lived in the country and worked in the cities just like today despite a major disparity on services. Wash day was on a home calender because daily washing was and still is impractical when you are doing it manually for a family. Manually heating and transporting water daily to do mini-washes simply is a terrible waste of time and labor. We spend a fortune on gimmicks and gizmos but I bet few people know a good galvanized wash tub and wash board cost less than $100 and even fewer have them. The part left out of our good friends book "Lights Out" was all the people with bruised ribs and knees and sore from bending over trying to wash clothes in modern bathtub. There's will do in a pinch and then there's long term. Most of the plastic gimmicks and gizmo's will be busted in a matter of weeks. Many will be thinking with all our other survival stuff, we don't have room for a couple nice galvanized wash tubs. Yet I bet everyone of us has plastic storage bins. Unless you are using them for washing, they take little space as you can fill them with whatever. I even use one of mine for catching rain water. Most of my family has the oval ones they use to store wood but in needed, there they are. In fact, all a laundry basket is, is a lighter version of just one application of the old wash tub which doubled as a way to haul your wet clothes to the clothes line. Some people who have it figured how to continue having running water have it really made by having a wash sink, which is just another offshoot of the old wash tub. I know this sounds like stepping back in history but if you have power, life is chess game not checkers. Things like heating and hauling water become bigger deals. There was a reason before widespread electricity laundries and wash women type jobs were very popular. In fact in some "Mad Max" type EOTWAWKI or heck even if the liberals have their way and power becomes such a premium these windmills and solar stations without a 50% government subsidiarity become widespread, they may become again one day. Tj |
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I lived in South America for a couple of years a long time ago and in one little town I lived in I did my laundry in a cement wash basin. Took about 1/2 hour to an hour to do it. Then I'd wring it out by hand and hang it on the line to dry. Not a big deal.
That little plastic plunger-like tool will work great if you have no stains, but stains take scrubbing, so get a good stout scrub brush. A bar of laundry soap, a scrub brush, a tub/wash basin and something to scrub/wring the laundry against is all you need. |
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I have a plunger-like device...forget where I got it. It is SPECIFICALLY made for manual laundry chores. Plastic end witha baffle. 1" hole in bucket lid. Easy peasy. Wife has was 'delicates' in it and they turned out fine. Redman PS here it is-http://www.bestdryingrack.com/images-new/clothes-washer.jpg I have a version of this, used to do laundry in the bathtub with it on a semi-regular basis. Works fine, not much work and doesn't take too long. You can heat water in a pot on the stove or over a fire. Wringing is the hard part. I used to do it by hand, but this gets old and it takes quite a while for clothes to dry in Oregon winters when you're just hand wringing them. Jeans and towels are the worst to hand wring. I'm in the market for a good wringer if anyone has some links. I'd like an antique-style wringer, but new. I've heard some folks use industrial mop buckets but seems less than ideal. Drying = clothes line. |
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Quoted: 55 gallon barrel, bucket full of golf balls, water + clothes, have the kids roll it around for awhile. some of you like to work too hard bingo or a 5 gallon with gamma lid..shake,,and roll. or be fancy and tie it to a tree with bungees top and bottom and give it a good tug and let the bungees do the work. |
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I have a version of this, used to do laundry in the bathtub with it on a semi-regular basis. Works fine, not much work and doesn't take too long. You can heat water in a pot on the stove or over a fire. Wringing is the hard part. I used to do it by hand, but this gets old and it takes quite a while for clothes to dry in Oregon winters when you're just hand wringing them. Jeans and towels are the worst to hand wring. I'm in the market for a good wringer if anyone has some links. I'd like an antique-style wringer, but new. I've heard some folks use industrial mop buckets but seems less than ideal. Drying = clothes line. Quoted:
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I have a plunger-like device...forget where I got it. It is SPECIFICALLY made for manual laundry chores. Plastic end witha baffle. 1" hole in bucket lid. Easy peasy. Wife has was 'delicates' in it and they turned out fine. Redman PS here it is-http://www.bestdryingrack.com/images-new/clothes-washer.jpg I have a version of this, used to do laundry in the bathtub with it on a semi-regular basis. Works fine, not much work and doesn't take too long. You can heat water in a pot on the stove or over a fire. Wringing is the hard part. I used to do it by hand, but this gets old and it takes quite a while for clothes to dry in Oregon winters when you're just hand wringing them. Jeans and towels are the worst to hand wring. I'm in the market for a good wringer if anyone has some links. I'd like an antique-style wringer, but new. I've heard some folks use industrial mop buckets but seems less than ideal. Drying = clothes line. Check out Lehman's wringers. Lehmans is the place for old school hand tools. |
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I lived in South America for a couple of years a long time ago and in one little town I lived in I did my laundry in a cement wash basin. Took about 1/2 hour to an hour to do it. Then I'd wring it out by hand and hang it on the line to dry. Not a big deal. That little plastic plunger-like tool will work great if you have no stains, but stains take scrubbing, so get a good stout scrub brush. A bar of laundry soap, a scrub brush, a tub/wash basin and something to scrub/wring the laundry against is all you need. Good stuff! The thing about doing laundry manually is that it's a pain in the butt, relatively speaking. But even with modern electric washers, your clothes will not get completely clean if they are heavily stained. If you pre treat stains by rubbing them with a bar of laundry soap it helps a lot, especially with greasy stains. The other thing that works great is simply to let things soak in soapy water for a long time - over night or several days. If you have to do it by hand there is nothing that says your laundry can't sit for a while before you scrub, rinse and wring it. TJ mentioned using plastic tubs - the ones with lids are great because you could simply cover your wash and let the soap work it's magic. Another thing that comes to mind is that if the water isn't all that dirty you could cover it up and re-use it. |
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Link no work Tried it! Works just fine. Anyone else having trouble with this link? Thanks! PITA45 
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works fine for me. Tried it! Works just fine. Anyone else having trouble with this link? Thanks! PITA45
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works fine for me. Tried it! Works just fine. Anyone else having trouble with this link? Thanks! PITA45
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works fine for me. Tried it! Works just fine. Anyone else having trouble with this link? Thanks! PITA45
yup, link works! |