Bucket Washing

Traveling around the world, there are many parts of life that are the same: resting/sleeping at night time, eating meals throughout the day, meeting people, making friends, etc.  There are also many parts of life that look different depending on which continent you are on, your income level, etc., such as: transportation, food to be eaten, how to stay clean and more.  One things I enjoy doing around the world is bucket washing my clothes.  This looks a bit different in each location but over all goes something like this:

Wear clothes – have a great time – wear clothes more than once – when water is available, wash the clothes and repeat.

Many people ask me how I hand wash/bucket wash my laundry, so I thought I’d write a little how to for y’all 🙂

First, you need to soak your clothes in water, if you have detergent, put some in the water, if you are using a bar of soap – body soap works well or a laundry bar, soaking in water is still a good idea.  You want to give your clothes a chance to release some of the sweat, stains, dirt and grime they have accumulated while you’ve worn them.  

After soaking your clothes for 20 minutes, if you have detergent, then you need to scrub your clothes – some of the cloth in two hands and rub together, if you have a bar of soap, you will need to lather up your clothes and then scrub them.

Then, you rinse your clothes.  Using the least amount of water, you want to rinse/soak your clothes in non soapy water.  Sometime you will need to repeat this step twice.  

Next, you ring out your clothes – ring gently, there is no need to try and squeeze every drop out – the more you ring, the more you stretch your clothing.

Finally, find a spot where you can hang your clothes to dry.

Some tips:

* Don’t wait to wash your clothes until all of your clothes are dirty.  You will enjoy the process much more if you have 2 of everything, instead of a mountain.  Plus with water being such a precious resource around the world, you need to use it sparingly. 

* Soaking is the key to clean clothes.  Don’t soak your clothes more than an hour though, you don’t want them to get mildewed.  

* Sometimes, I will wash my clothes while taking a bucket shower, thus washing 1 outfit, using less water and keeping everything fresh and clean.

* Go easy on the amount of soap/detergent that you use.  Americans think if there are no suds/bubbles, then it’s not clean.  This is not true.  If you use too much soap and are not able to get it out, you will have crunchy/hard clothes.

* Don’t stretch out all of your clothing by overly ringing it out.

* If you are hanging your clothes directly in sunlight, turn your clothes inside out, in case the sun bleaches them.

* You don’t want your clothes hanging in the sun for days or they will be sun bleached and faded.

* Have fun, stay clean and learn from the locals.  If you’ve never hand washed clothes before, the locals do it quite regularly, they’ll be happy to show you how it’s done!