Are you prepared to handle Mount Washmore?

My week and a half without a functioning washing machine ended Monday afternoon. Let me tell ya, you really learn appreciate the conveniences of modern life when you have to do laundry for six people by hand! I'm glad that I faced this little challenge when I still had hot water flowing from from the tap and power to run the dryer.

This caused me to put some thought to the essentials you need to do your family's laundry in an emergency scenario. Clean laundry might not be your first concern during TEOTWAWKI, but I guarantee that you will be thankful to have a plan in place.

Breathing Hand Washer
Image from lehmans.com

Basic List of Laundry Supplies:

1. Water - Do you have enough water stored to do laundry in an emergency? I know that I don't, but I hope to remedy this problem in the next few months. I do, however, have some natural bodies of water nearby. If I collected water from these sources, ran it through a rudimentary filter to catch sediment, and then boiled it, I could use it for my laundry. Sounds like a hassle, doesn't it?  
2. A large pot or kettle - You need to be able to heat the large amounts of water it takes to clean your clothes. I plan on using my water bath canner.
3. A way to heat water - I hope you've already thought about how you will cook your family's food during an emergency. Woodstove, outdoor grill, butane stove, whatever - the same thing can do double duty and heat water for your laundry. Just make sure you have enough fuel on hand to do the job. Of course if you are relying on some tiny little camping stove, it might not be capable of heating huge kettles of water.  
4. A three month supply of laundry detergent - Track the amount of detergent you use over the course of three months, then make sure you have that amount on hand at all times. Don't forget to rotate your stored detergent since it does technically expire. A quick Internet search revealed that it lasts 9 months to a year if it is unopened. 
5. A "washing machine" - When I washed all my family's laundry by hand, it was literally with my hands in hot soapy water. It got the job done, but I was left with tired, waterlogged hands at the end of it. A minimal investment in a plunger-type hand washer would have made my life so much easier. I washed my clothes in my laundry sink. You might set aside a couple of clean five gallon buckets for this purpose if you do not have a dedicated laundry sink. 
6. A wringer - This is a more pricey investment, but key to a more enjoyable laundry experience. Otherwise you will have to use your hands to wring out excess moisture from your wet laundry and I can assure you from experience that you will not find wringing multiple pairs of jeans or a mound of towels to be fun. Lehman's sells two wringers ("good" and "best")and you can attach them to a 5 gallon bucket, chair, or other hard surface. 
7. Somewhere to hang clothes to dry - An outdoor clothesline or indoor drying racks. Check out all the options that Lehman's has. No, this post was not sponsored by Lehman's! I just really like them. :)

For extra credit: 

• Store a one year supply of laundry detergent. You might consider storing the ingredients for my homemade powdered recipe as it is both cheaper and more compact to store. 
• Buy a real off-grid washing machine, if you have the funds and the place to store it. I don't!

You'll note that I haven't addressed ironing. That's because I don't iron if I can possibly help it! If ironed clothing is important to you, Lehman's does has a selection of irons you can use off the grid.

Have you ever had to wash clothes by hand for an extended period of time? What are your must-haves to do laundry in an emergency situation? 

Homemade Powdered Laundry Detergent

It's cheap, it's compact, and it's easy to store. You can buy a few boxes of the ingredients and have clean clothes for years.  It's even mostly "green". Here's how I made my own laundry detergent.

There are several different recipes for laundry detergent floating around out there, but here are the ingredients for the one I chose to use:

Borax, Washing Soda, Fels-Naptha Soap and Oxi-Clean (Billy Mays would be proud.)

The first ingredient is Fels-Naptha laundry soap. I hear that this can be tricky to find. Strangely enough, I was able to find this in our small town grocery store! Our grocery store doesn’t consistently carry boneless skinless chicken breasts, but by cracky it has Fels-Naptha! As an added bonus, Fels-Naptha can also be used as a remedy for poison ivy.  It will strip the poison ivy oils right off your skin.

The second ingredient, which can also be challenging to find, is Washing Soda. This is not quite the same as baking soda. I also was able to find it in my grocery store but I was prepared to order it online via Lehman's. Alternatively, you can make washing soda by cooking baking soda on the stove or in the oven. If you homeschool like we do, changing sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate counts as a chemistry lesson, an added bonus!

The third and fourth ingredients are common: Borax and Oxi-Clean. Obviously, Oxi-Clean isn't exactly old-fashioned, so you will not find it in every laundry detergent recipe. Some recipes stick to just the first three ingredients or add baking soda instead.

How to make it: Most recipes call for grating the soap and melting the whole lot of ingredients together to create a liquid detergent. You end up with a 5 gallon bucket of slimy goop. That’s A) too much work and B) yet another 5 gallon bucket for me to trip over, so I decided to go for powdered detergent. I grated the soap and made sure my pieces were tiny. Then I mixed it with the other ingredients. I made a triple batch, which I calculated to be enough for roughly 158 loads.

When I did the math, this homemade laundry detergent cost me roughly 7 cents per load. The Tide HE detergent I had been buying at Sam’s Club costs about 20 cents per load. If I had skipped the Oxi-Clean, the savings would have been even greater. But does this stuff work?

Yes, it does. I have a front-loading HE washer which means I need only a small amount of HE-friendly (ie. low-suds) detergent. This detergent fits the bill. I found that 2 tablespoons of the detergent does a great job getting my clothes clean. The freshly washed clothes smelled faintly of the Fels-Naptha (a pleasant scent), but the scent faded quickly. I don’t like my laundry to have a strong smell, so that is a plus for me. All in all, I’d say this is a successful experiment.


Homemade Laundry Detergent Powder

1 bar Fels-Naptha laundry soap, shredded and pulverized
1 c. washing soda
1 c. Borax
1/2 c. Oxi-Clean

Mix together thoroughly. Add 1-2 T. per load for an HE washer, more as necessary for a conventional washer.

If you try it, let me know how it works for you!