The washing machine and dryer seem to always have a load of something going, from clothes to bath towels and bedsheets. And, with the recent experience of the washing machine breaking while many people were in town, the laundry really did pile up. Even if it were just us, going a week or two without doing any laundry would turn into a minor annoyance.
Granted, we could go a week or two and get through it but what if it turns out that we had to go months without resumption of water or electricity? There were some people affected by various disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes) that have had this problem. Not doing laundry for this long could then turn into a health risk.
I’d like to think I would be ready since I have a sturdy family-sized washboard, I’ve made the 5-gallon bucket washing system , I have both a traditional clothesline and the umbrella style, I want to buy a Wonderwash soon, but all of these solutions are very limited in what can be washed at any one time; moreover, I’m not even going to consider the water required to do laundry. In my opinion, there’s a very small likelihood that we would be willing to keep up with the laundry as usual if we had to rely solely on our emergency gear.
So, what’s the solution?
Rethink your laundry habits! Most of us are accustomed to wearing clothing once during the day and then tossing it in the hamper without a second thought. My kids are notorious–though getting better–for wanting to change their clothes more than once a day (usually upon returning home from school) and I can’t imagine the laundry if we had a teenage daughter. 😉
When you’re faced with a significant emergency, especially a longer-term one, then you really need to reconsider all of your habits and laundry is a bigger one than you might think. You may very well find yourself purposely wearing the same clothes for days on end or even re-wearing shirts and pants that you would have otherwise tossed in the hamper. In fact, it might be a good rule that if your clothing is obviously dirty or very smelly then they get worn until they’re obviously grungy.
The only exception I would make to the above rule is for underclothes; these should be washed and rotated out more regularly for the obvious reason that they’re in constant contact with your body. The good news is that you can easily wash several pairs of undergarments at one time with most of the aforementioned gear thereby saving time and water.
In fact, this might be a good time to designate one or two pairs of clothes that would be considered the “outside” or “work” clothes for times where you may need to get dirty fixing things, working the garden, and so on. These clothes would purposely be left dirty (within reason) and only donned when you need to go outside and get dirty. In so doing, you would cut down on laundry needs dramatically.
I would also like to mention one other thing, and that’s bath towels. Around our house we take bath towels and fold them over a few times before hanging on the towel rack (like most people do) after bathing. Normally, this is rarely a problem in an air conditioned house but I would suspect that we could be in for a potential mold problem if we did this in a home that was not adequately air conditioned, such as after a summertime disaster in the south or midwest. So, instead hang towels over either a clothesline or maybe the back of a chair when not being used so they have the best chance of drying out. This could be said about any clothing, not just bath towels.
The point here is to think about little things like this. Sure, you could get by and make do but small tweaks like this could keep the aftermath of a disaster from being even worse. Hope that helps!
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