Best way to do laundry while boondocking?

bka0721 wrote:
The boondocking I do, I am hours away from a town that would have a laundromat, plus I don’t really want to go into town to do this task when I carry everything I need with me. Like has been stated before, I carry extra clothes to do the long distance before washing them.

But, when the time comes and water is available, stream, lake, pond and my favorite a windmill with a stock pond, I just whip up my own washer water. It just needs a bit of filtering. No tadpoles, minnows, bugs and sticks in my laundry water! Explained below.

All one needs, is biodegradable water, a plunger with 1” holes drilled out of it, three buckets, a hamper and adequate clothes line and pins. (Please, please do not wash clothes in streams, lakes or ponds and certainly don’t dump your spent laundry water into them. Dump them 200 ft. from any water source onto the ground. No, it makes no difference if the soap you used is biodegradable. Love your earth and your earth will love you.)

Start with 4 five gallon buckets, if you are carrying water up from a water source. You will need 3 to wash and 1 to carry the water up from the water source. Having a DC power sump pump works, if you have one. But, be aware that this is in conflict with water laws with most western states. But, in most cases no one is going to complain for this type of water use. Just be aware of the fact that water is important to land owners in the west.

Get one of the buckets out and carry some water up from the stream, lake and or pond. Take an empty bucket and insert a well-worn pillow case. Pour the water into the empty bucket now wearing the pillow case. (You can see this is my outside shower bucket too, with shower nozzle attached. You can see my Shower stand shadow as well as my shower mats. So everything I have with me, has multiple uses.)





Pull out the Pillow Case slowly out and be sure to note which side in the side you insert into the empty bucket. (I use the seam side for the side I pour into) Insert it into the newly empty bucket and pour the just filled bucket into newly Pillow Case Cladded bucket and repeat until you feel everything looks clean enough to start washing your clothes! (to clean the pillow case, turn it inside out and shake)




One with soap and the other two will get soapy soon enough. Then just rotate the buckets. The middle bucket becomes the first bucket and the first bucket is emptied and filled again with clean water, as does the final rinse bucket. Do it enough times and you’ll catch on how this works.

I had a wooden handle plunger but a friend borrowed it and didn’t bring it back. Just get a toilet plunger, drill out some holes with a hole saw bit. Then get after the clothes in the first bucket. Don’t over fill with clothes! Room with water will get your clothes cleaner. Set the clothes into the 2nd bucket and let soak while you hammer on another set in the 1st bucket. Plunge the clothes in the 2nd bucket, wring out the clothes and set into rinse bucket. Plunge the final Rinse Bucket Clothes and pull out and wring out and place in hamper. Repeat process until all your clothes are in the hamper and you are out of water.




Secure your clothes line well, because the weight of the wet clothes and the wind blowing them can be a weighty issue. Spread them out and pin to clothes line. After a while, go out and reverse top to bottom (for those that didn’t hang clothes with their mom or dad as a kid). You’ll be surprised how fast this works. Plus, in dry and warm areas you can hang your clothes after dark and have things dry before the sun comes up. This is a good way of drying your clothes if you don’t want to draw attention to yourself or your location.




With clothes washed the old fashioned way, it will certainly leave you with a sense of accomplishment and smelling a lot better than if you had not.

b

You have this down to a science. I'm am truly impressed. We hang everything out at home, only use the dryer when it's been raining for over a week. I dislike using Laundromats, it seems that even though we thoroughly check the washers/dryers before use, some alien article of clothing appears in our finished product and that really creeps me out.

What really makes me sad is when we camp at a place where they won't let you put out drying lines. We don't frequent places like that if we don't have to. To disallow drying lines is totally lowlife, in my opinion ;).