I don’t know anyone who looks forward to the challenges we will all encounter when our society collapses. There are those who hope for stronger families and a return to God and good government, but we don’t necessarily joyfully anticipate doing without the modern appliances that have made our lives so comfortable. We’ve all learned over the past year or so (if we didn’t previously realize it) that most of our appliances are imported. Some people have had to wait for months to get freezers and refrigerators.
I, for one, really don’t ever want to be without a washing machine.
Of course, I know how to wash by hand (or foot, as the Koreans do), but I just don’t relish the idea. And that is now, when I have only my husband and one nearly adult child at home. The two of them make plenty of laundry as it is, despite my best efforts. I can’t imagine tackling this chore with a larger family. Well, actually, I can. And so I worry about people are going to do.
We can’t just stop doing laundry. Not only is it gross, but it invites disease. We still have to be clean if we want to be healthy. And we want to look good. (In general. I fully recognize that there will be times when we don’t want to “look” good. When we go out we certainly don’t want to attract attention or look like we’re doing well. But we will be at home, away from others, most of the time and there we want to look and feel good.) When we look good, we feel good.
So how can we cut back on the loads of laundry we do each week?
Wear an apron. Wearing an apron is probably the best way to keep from damaging clothes. It’s something I harp on to my family all the time. (You would think that after 30 years, my husband would start listening to me. That he would remember the countless times he has stained new clothes by refusing to put an apron on.) Don’t allow kitchen help without aprons on. Even then, it’s best not to wear good clothes while cooking. Aprons also protect clothes while you’re working in the garden or workshop or cleaning the house.
Wear a house dress. Previous generations of women, including my grandmother, had a house dress they wore in the mornings for cleaning the house each day.
School/play clothes. Nice clothes will need less laundering and stay in good condition for longer if children change them out for play clothes when the school day is over. The same holds true for adults and work clothes.
Put clothes away. Don’t let family members throw clothing on the floor. Of course, if they do, then they get to start doing their own laundry. Whereas now they opt to just put it through the wash again, in the future if they’re doing laundry by hand, they’ll be a lot more apt to hang it up.
Wear wool. 100% wool and other natural animal fibers are antimicrobial. They are natural odor eaters. My son, Jared, received a Pendleton wool shirt with nice leather elbow pads when he was in high school. He was carefully taught that it was never to go through the wash. He wore that shirt all the time—at least weekly. And yet, he never brought it to us for dry cleaning. I began to wonder about that. This was a teenage boy with powerful stink factor. It was then that I learned of the wonderful properties of wool in defeating bacteria and the resultant odor.
Use a clothes brush or tape. Oftentimes we get smudges on our clothing that don’t really require washing. The debris can easily be removed with a clothes brush. Pet hair and lint can be removed with a lint roller or tape.
Wear shoes. Socks will not get as dirty if shoes are worn. As a bonus, socks will last longer if shoes or slippers are worn. Of course, shoes will last longer if they are not worn inside the house. This one’s a trade-off that you’ll have to decide for yourself.
Infant potty training. OK, those disposable diapers are really not going to last forever. While cloth diapers are what most Americans would turn to, daily diaper washing (by hand!) isn’t the only option. Previous generations of women were much closer physically to their children, often wearing them in slings while they worked around the home. This close communication enabled women to sense when their children needed to use the toilet. The result was very few dirty diapers at a time when washing by hand was the only option. I was fortunate to learn about this and do it with my youngest child.
Implementing these measures will significantly reduce the loads of laundry we do each week. They will save time and detergent, and just as importantly, these measures will also help us keep our clothes in good condition longer. This will be especially critical when we can’t import clothes from Asia anymore.
Links to related posts:
The Advantages of Natural Animal Fibers
25 february 2024
LOL I'm enjoying your apron comments. Work Aprons are SO useful.
ReplyDeleteFrom my garden apron made of recycled blue jeans with tool pockets and kneeling pad sewn in, even a secure velcro'ed pocket for my anti-squirrel tool >Wink<.
A Leather and jeans woodshop apron also with tool pockets, that has prevented me more than a few injuries from tool mishaps.
My butcher apron, ditto, easy to wash, keeps blood and such off me.
Even my surgical gown is a form of apron protecting the patient from my bugs and myself from theirs.
Something useful in preventing cross contamination in your family sickbay also BTW.
Jennifer, have you looked at a half barrel swing arm washer yet? Add a commercial mop squeezer, a drain hose to your dug dirty water sump pit and double twisted clothesline under tension to keep them off the ground AND replaces clothes pins? Used something like that in the Sandbox for over a year washing clothes nicely.
I have never heard of such a creature. I'll have to look it up. Squirrels aren't a problem here. Deer are. But if I tried to carry an anti-deer tool, it would make gardening a little cumbersome. And I'd probably get reported for poaching.
Deleteas far as clothes are SHTF concerned - the most important element is to have uber above average amount of the critical undergarments - including plenty of socks...
ReplyDeleteanother critical element in a serious SHTF will be durable clothing - your regular everyday casual wear won't be lasting long doing some of the newly required SHTF chores ...
All true. I noticed many years ago that almost all socks are made in China, or now, possibly somewhere else in Asia. We have boatloads of socks. And even more important than the socks are the undies. I could never make anything as comfortable as the ones I buy. So I've got a lot of those. Aaron realized he needed more (like I told him a long time ago, but he didn't want me to order them) a couple of months ago, and now everything he wanted is backordered for several months. Someday he'll learn...
Deletei read on a blog years ago to have a pair of 'house' sneakers. Never to be worn outside, only indoors. It saves on the socks and keeps dirt out of the house.
ReplyDeleteSJ in Vancouver BC Canada
Love that idea. What I like best is going barefoot, but it's too hard on my back now.
Delete[This comment was actually written at the TimeBomb2000.com forum about the above laundry article. It is reprinted with permission here.]
DeleteI 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...