Tonight’s program was about how to do laundry without electricity. Here is all the info from the show including links.

The 21st Century Homekeeper Radio Program~ July 14 ~

Homemade Laundry Detergent
More Laundry Detergent Information

Lehman’s  Wringer Washer

Lehman’s Hand Agitator

Lehman’s Wash Tubs

 

To wash your clothes in buckets:
5 gallon buckets are the best.  One for washing and at least one for rinsing, 2 is best. Add clear cold water to the first bucket, watera nd 1/2 cup vinegar to the second one.
If only using one rinse bucket, rinse once , change water and rinse again.
Sort your clothes. Add hot or warm water to your wash bucket, add soap and agitate a little. Add clothes and allow to soak. Again, over night is ideal but just a few hours will loosen dirt .
After soaking, agitate the clothes for about 10 minutes.
Pull the clothes out one article at a time and squeeze excess soapy water out. Add washed clothes to a rinse bucket. Agitate for a few minutes, squeeze out excess water and add to second rinse bucket.
Agitatie the second rinse water and vinegar, squeeze out water and hang ot dry.
A lot of times its hard to get out all the excess water when you are hand wringing. Just get out all you can and hang the clothes to dry. As long as its not wet outside, they will dry well. If it is raining outside and you need to hang the clothes inside, hang them over the tub. Its best to wait to do hand laundry til the weather will allow you to hang them outdoors if possible.

To wash your clothes outdoors using a fire and lots of water, follow these intsructions. And you may want to presoak very dirty clothes, its helpful and you don’t have to scrub so much!

The very first thing to do is gather all your equipment. You will need: 3 large tubs, water tight. One for wshing that can be heated and two for rinsing. These can be made of any material. Years ago iron pots were used for this, but I use galvanized tubs or even plastic for rinsing.

Laundry Soap. Of course, lye soap was used many years ago, but if you only have regular laundry soap, so much the better! You can even use bar soap like Ivory pr Zote. For heavy stains try Fels Naptha.
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A washing board. Yep, you really need this little contraption. Unless that is, you want to take your clothes and pound the dirt out of them with a club! Yes, some ladies actually did this to clean their clothes! Wore the fabric out pretty quickly, I’d say. Believe me, you will get very tired of rubbing your clothes on your hands, get a wash board.

You might want to get a bottle of bluing for the whites, and some fabric softener or vinegar

You’ll need a supply of wood for a fire and a safe place to build a fire. One of your pans needs to be able to sit over a fire. You will also need a long stick with which to move clothes out of the hot water, and to stir them in the wash water.

Now, you’re ready to start!

Build a good hot fire. Wait a little while and let it burn down a bit so that there are plenty of hot coals. Fashion a way that you can set the tub off teh ground so you can rake hot colas underneath the tub.  It is really best to have a tub with feet on it, but you can rig up a good set up using an old grill off of a BBQ or something. Even cinder blocks or large rocks can be used. While the fire is heating, you can separate your clothes, by color and by least to most dirty.

Fill two rinse tubs with cool, clean water, away from the fire. These are your rinse waters.

Fill the wash tub about 2/3 with water. Let it heat until very hot, even boiling. You may even want to boil very dirty clothes like work pants, jeans or white socks. Add laundry soap. You can grate and dissolve powdered or bar soap in water before adding it to the tub of hot water. Or you may choose to add no soap at this time.

If you won’t be boiling the clothing, remove the coals out from under the tub, carefully.  Don’t be careless and get burned. Some people do boil their clothes to help remove dirt and soil but remember that boiling wears out the clothing faster so I only recommend it if the clothing is truly greasy and/or very soiled.

Pretreat any stains as you normally would. Add your clothes to the hot water, starting with the least dirty ones first like shirts and underwear.

Be careful of burning your hands in the hot water! Rub the clothes on the washboard. Adding soap as needed. Rub then plunge, rub, then plunge…..remember Far and Away?

Take the hot clothes out of the wash water (if you have boiled them, you’ll have to use your stick)  place them in the first rinse. Rinse and wring as best as you can. Place the clothes in the second rinse, adding fabric softener or bluing if desired. Don’t wear yourself out wringing, just hang up the clothes, dripping, outside. If it is in winter or rainy weather, you will have to wring them as well as you can.

Continue through the dirtiest clothes, re-using the wash water as many times as you can get away with it. Just re-heat it until you have to start over with clean water. You can use the second rinse water many, many times. The first rinse water will have to be changed frequently depending on how much soap you use.

When I get to the point that I need to change my wash water, I try to find something I can use it for instead of throwing it out. Usually I end up washing the porch and deck. You could wash your deck, boat, or dog kennel, I guess.

The key to clean clothes is plenty of elbow grease and plenty of rinsing!

Other Methods

Even using electricity, there are other methods that use less electricity and get your clothes cleaner than the electric washer. The wringer washer is especially efficient. Lehman’s carries a Maytag wringer washer for about $800 that will last for generations, uses less water than a regular electric washer, has safety features and is easy to use.

Table Top Washing Machines – uses about 90% less water than regular machines, easy to use, just need a sink and faucet, forces the water and detergent through clothes, spins water out. Wonder Washer brand comes to mind, but there are others.  The draw back is that these washers hold only a few articles of clothing at a time and it can take all day lon gto do a few loads.  so if you have a large family these may not be practical.

Drying Clothing Outside
Hanging clothing on the clothesline is an old fashioned pleasure. It forces you to slow down, and offers you an opportunity to enjoy the weather, nature. And it gives you the wonderful chanceee your mind to do some deep thinking. I’ve solved a lot of problems and prayed a lot of prayers at the clothes line over the years.

Here are some pointers for hanging clothes on the line:

Shake out the towel firmly before hanging.  Or, air-dry the towels a little in the dryer before hanging outside.

1) Give all the clothes a good firm snap. Hold tight to one end of the clothing and then shake it or snap it hard. This will help the clothes to dry with a minimum of stiffness. It also helps to use either vinegar or fabric softener in the rinse water.

2) Loosely fold the wet items so that they are easier to get out of the laundry basket and not in a big tumbled knot. You don’t have to get crazy with this, just snap that t-shirt and then fold it in half, lay it in the basket and go on to the next one.

3) Completely fold flat and fitted sheets into long rectangles and place in the basket! Yep, you heard me. Sheets dry pretty quickly and if you don’t have a space issue on your clothes line, go ahead and fold the sheet in half and hang on the line. BUT, if you do have space issues OR if someone in your household has allergy issues, you can fold the sheets in half, half again and then into a long rectangle. Hang the rectangle on the line. It will dry pretty quickly, all the surface areas of the sheet won’t be covered in pollen and you save a lot of space on the line.

4) Hang shirts and t-shirts upside down by the side seams. What this accomplishes is that the heaviest part of the shirt is hanging upside down and it works with gravity to pull the moisture out of the fabric in the heaviest part of the clothing. It also helps to have the side seams of t-shirts lined up when they are drying, they tend to be easier to fold and the seams more lined up.

5) Hang towels from the narrow edge, don’t fold them over the line.

6) Hang clothing in a long chain, using the last clothespin as the fastener for the next item of clothing.

7) Use a chair or other lightweight stand so you don’t have to bend and straighten up so often, that gets really tiring after several loads. In fact the best help is a little helper who will retrieve items from the basket and hand them to you! A small child can do this and enjoy being a helper.

8 ) Always bring your clothespins inside after you are finished with them. Leaving them outside seems convenient at first but the weather tends to be hard on clothespins and can cause them to leave stains on your clothing. A good idea is an apron with big front pockets or a clothespin bag that you can transport in and outside.

9) Consider getting a wooden or stainless steel drying rack for small items like socks. These racks can be set outside in the sun to dry, in the tub or somewhere else inside.  They fold up and can be put out of the way when you’re finished with it.