Washing without water

Before David left in the morning, I told him I was going to do laundry that day, so he gathered together his dirty clothes – did he do laundry much while I was gone?– and left them on our bed. I called on my mom to borrow clothespins (note to self: add to shopping list for next week) and sat down to figure this out.

I'd never washed clothes by hand. All right, I did once in Thailand, in the kitchen sink with Woolite... But this is different. I'm going to be washing all our clothes by hand. And we don't have running water in the house. Hmm.

I got two buckets and an empty plastic hamper. I filled both buckets with cold water from a big barrel outside that David had filled last week when the city water was on. Then I put a packet of laundry soap into one bucket and stirred it. Okay, so now what? Obviously put the clothes into the soapy water... and...? Scrub them? With my hands? A washing machine agitates the clothes in the water. I don't have a washboard... So I put some clothes in and started washing. The shirts and underwear were easy. No sweat. My friend Heather had told me that duck soap (long bars of green soap) got out dirty and stained spots, so I used that. Wow! And then I rinsed them and put them into the hamper to take outside to the communal clothesline strung up between some trees.

But the trousers were harder. And by the time I reached them, the wash water was filthy and my hands were raw. So I dumped out both buckets of water and decided to take a break. (Besides, I couldn't fit David's trousers onto the clothesline until his shirts were dry.) I filled both buckets with clean water, put laundry soap into one, and put in David's lab coat to soak. When I came back a half hour later, I started again. I discovered trousers are awfully hard to rinse. Hmm. Is it okay to wring the trousers, or will that wear out the fabric too quickly? The rinse water turned soapy almost immediately. So I dumped it out and filled the bucket again. And my hands stung in the soapy water. But I kept going. Finally, the trousers were all clean! At least I think so.

I took down the shirts and put up the trousers to dry (Most of them still feel soapy, but oh well!). In this weather, drying doesn't take long. But I'll probably have to iron all the clothes to make sure we don't get infested with “mango worms,” fly larvae from eggs laid in clean and dry clothes hung outside. *shudder* But I'm wiped out. So maybe I'll save the ironing for another day!