Barry Natchitoches
Has No Life - Lives on TB
I was over on SchoolMarm’s website, where she does a great jub of talking about how to deal with keeping clothes clean and in good condition in a prolonged situation.
I am not going to go through all she presents over there. I can’t link to it with my mobile device, but hopefully somebody else will provide the link. Her whole website is an excellent place to visit, including but not limited to the article on clothing.
But I wanted to add a few thoughts on that topic.
First, in a SHTF situation, clean clothes will be a huge morale booster. Many of us will have to engage in heavy labor in really hot temps that will make keeping clean more difficult, yet we will need the pick me up that comes from at least a brief wash and a clean set of clothes much more important than we need right now. The stress relief alone will be worth some extra effort to prep for this right now.
There are utility free ways to clean at least some clothes - two 5 gallon buckets, a (clean) toilet plunger, a mop wringer to wring water out of the clothes and a clothes line to hang closes leaps quickly to mind. Lighter clotes (not cotton!) do better in this arrangement. This would help.
But it will be impossible for most of us to keep a whole lot of clothes clean this way. It is manually intensive, for one thing, and what do you do when you have months in a row of bad weather?
May I make a suggestion to supplement your other efforts?
Since you will probably be limited in how many clothes you can clean with limited resources, why not choose a sturdy set of clothing to be your “roustabout” outfit.
I have a friend that lives on a farm who has been doing this for years. His home is on an older, 500 gallon septic system, so if he uses an electric washing machine he has the problem of what to do with the washer’s wastewater. And todays washers don’t get rugged farm clothes very clean anyway, he says.
So he and his wife use one of those Wonder Washers that you can get, that is the ones you crank by hand - to do some light clothes.
But his big secret to clean clothes is to NOT wear clean clothes when he goes out to do hard labor.
He has some designared “roustabout” outfits that he wears around the farm. Many of them are sturdy, cotton items. He gets those things filthy over time, I mean so filthy that they get to where they can stand up on their own.
But he NEVER washes them. I mean NEVER!
The closest thing they get to a washing is if he is wearing them outside when a rainstorm hits.
When he finishes his labor of the day, he goes to an outdoor shed, where he takes off his stinky, dirty roustabout outfit and hangs them up, and changes into an outfit that his wife will allow inside their house. Then, he goes inside, takes a shower, and puts on nice, clean clothes for the rest of the day.
Next day, he begins his work day by heading to the shed and changing out of clean clothes, and into his roustabout outfit.
Then he gets to work.
The thing about this system that makes it work is that - if you don’t do alot of heavy labor or work in dirty conditions - you can actually keep your clothes pretty clean for a long time if you have to. Even if you cannot shower every day - something that might not be possible in a SHTF situation.
If you set it up where only one or two outfits take all of the “abuse”, then you can wear clean clothes the rest of the time, while utilizing very few resources or time to have that supply of clean clothes to wear.
He says he and his wife only wash clothes a few times a year doing things this way, yet they don’t wear dirty clothes any time except for when they are engaged in farm labor.
Just an idea, for what it is worth...
I am not going to go through all she presents over there. I can’t link to it with my mobile device, but hopefully somebody else will provide the link. Her whole website is an excellent place to visit, including but not limited to the article on clothing.
But I wanted to add a few thoughts on that topic.
First, in a SHTF situation, clean clothes will be a huge morale booster. Many of us will have to engage in heavy labor in really hot temps that will make keeping clean more difficult, yet we will need the pick me up that comes from at least a brief wash and a clean set of clothes much more important than we need right now. The stress relief alone will be worth some extra effort to prep for this right now.
There are utility free ways to clean at least some clothes - two 5 gallon buckets, a (clean) toilet plunger, a mop wringer to wring water out of the clothes and a clothes line to hang closes leaps quickly to mind. Lighter clotes (not cotton!) do better in this arrangement. This would help.
But it will be impossible for most of us to keep a whole lot of clothes clean this way. It is manually intensive, for one thing, and what do you do when you have months in a row of bad weather?
May I make a suggestion to supplement your other efforts?
Since you will probably be limited in how many clothes you can clean with limited resources, why not choose a sturdy set of clothing to be your “roustabout” outfit.
I have a friend that lives on a farm who has been doing this for years. His home is on an older, 500 gallon septic system, so if he uses an electric washing machine he has the problem of what to do with the washer’s wastewater. And todays washers don’t get rugged farm clothes very clean anyway, he says.
So he and his wife use one of those Wonder Washers that you can get, that is the ones you crank by hand - to do some light clothes.
But his big secret to clean clothes is to NOT wear clean clothes when he goes out to do hard labor.
He has some designared “roustabout” outfits that he wears around the farm. Many of them are sturdy, cotton items. He gets those things filthy over time, I mean so filthy that they get to where they can stand up on their own.
But he NEVER washes them. I mean NEVER!
The closest thing they get to a washing is if he is wearing them outside when a rainstorm hits.
When he finishes his labor of the day, he goes to an outdoor shed, where he takes off his stinky, dirty roustabout outfit and hangs them up, and changes into an outfit that his wife will allow inside their house. Then, he goes inside, takes a shower, and puts on nice, clean clothes for the rest of the day.
Next day, he begins his work day by heading to the shed and changing out of clean clothes, and into his roustabout outfit.
Then he gets to work.
The thing about this system that makes it work is that - if you don’t do alot of heavy labor or work in dirty conditions - you can actually keep your clothes pretty clean for a long time if you have to. Even if you cannot shower every day - something that might not be possible in a SHTF situation.
If you set it up where only one or two outfits take all of the “abuse”, then you can wear clean clothes the rest of the time, while utilizing very few resources or time to have that supply of clean clothes to wear.
He says he and his wife only wash clothes a few times a year doing things this way, yet they don’t wear dirty clothes any time except for when they are engaged in farm labor.
Just an idea, for what it is worth...
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