What is the function of a washing machine anyway? Is it just a bunch of solvent combined with agitation? Kinda feels like it...
One resource at WL that is currently in large supply is heavy duty polyethylene
milk crates (thank you Jenn and
Josiah). These things have a ton of uses and they may be in a bunch more of my MoPID posts. Now I wouldn't go out of your way to buy them, but if you have some around or something similar, maybe give these clothes washing tricks a try, they worked out pretty well.
Two of these cubic crates, turned so that the openings face each other, make a very sturdy washing machine drum that fit about 10 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, 15 pairs of socks, and a dozen boxers with some room to spare. The excess space is going to be crucial later, so don't overpack. I tied all four sets of handles tightly together to seal up the drum so that nothing would fall out, then headed down to the creek.
Fortunately there is a clean mountain stream that has about a 3 foot waterfall from a culvert not too far away. With a leader rope tied to the laundry drum, I floated it through the pool leading up to the falls, then hefted it up onto the rocks so that the bulk of the flow was hitting around the middle of the two crates. This provides a ton of agitation and a lot of total solvent (clean
water) passing through the clothes turbulently. Having the extra space in the drum allows all the fabric to move around more get exposure to the water. Every two minutes or so, I flipped the crates over 90deg or rotated the whole thing around, to allow water to hit all sides (~10 minutes total).
If you do not have a vigorous stream nearby but you do have clean, relatively still water, you can walk the drum around by the leader rope and dunk it up and down. The whole setup will be just about neutrally buoyant once the clothes are wet, so it is very little effort to control it in the water.
Now,
soap... This method passes such a huge amount of water through the clothes compared to either a machine or a hand washer that you may find you don't need soap at all. If you do decide to use it, make sure it is a natural soap like Oasis or Bronner's or another one where you can guarantee that all the ingredients are biodegradable and/or beneficial to the nearby plants, animals, and fungi. I would recommend carrying the laundry drum about 30 feet or more from the creek and setting it in a large, heavy duty trash bag, then pulling the ends of the bag up above the top of the crates. Fill this with water and your dosage of of soap and tie the top, then let it sit for ~15 minutes. Dump the soapy water here so most of it can ground-filter before reaching the stream again, then return the clothes to your waterfall or float regiment. Some soap will get into the water this way, so again make sure you used a good natural soap.
Five or ten more minutes in the water
should be
enough and then the clothes are ready to take out. Let the drum sit for a little bit up on some rocks to drain out some water weight, then take everything to your clothes line.
Sun drying clothes on the line is the best, but having to put
clothespins on every single sock and undergarment always annoys me. With the two milk crates, this can be made a lot quicker and easier. Untie three of the four sets of handles holding the crates together and unload all the big stuff to put up on the clothesline. Now with the crates open like a clam shell, tie a line around the two handles still together and tie that up onto your clothesline so that the crates are suspended at about waist-height off the ground. The socks and underwear can be threaded in one opening on the crate and out and adjacent one so they are securely held. Its amazing how much stuff you can fit on the two crates this way, check out the pictures! This way all your small stuff doesn't need clothespins or line space, and it still dries out very quickly.
How does this method compare to using a washing machine or to typical hand washing? Well it takes about the same amount of time as a washing machine but involves more personal labor. I would say it is less laborious than hand washing though to get to the same result. It requires a creek or other large clean water source, which is a definite downside. The water is probably going to be cold and it won't get out stains like rust or charcoal (believe me, I tried). The clothes did all come out smelling completely clean though. It costs nothing once you have the crates, so that is nice. The one part of the process that I will definitely use in the future is hang-drying the socks using the milk crates. I will try the whole thing again in a few weeks when I need to do laundry again and see if there are any parts that can be done better. Overall, I'd call it a wash.
This is part of the MoPID series of permaculture innovations that I am working on during my time at
Wheaton Labs. Check out the
thread if you'd like to follow along.
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