Laundry and Dishwashing during a disaster

"Survival Mom" gives some good instructions about how to do your housework when you have no electricity or running water.

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2012/03/21/cleaning-house-teotwawki-style/

She gives a lot of advice about doing laundry during a disaster.

Here is part of the instruction:
Have at least two very large buckets (you can pick up some 20 gallon tubs at the big box store for just a few dollars), a Rapid Washer, a wash board, and wringer if possible.  If you don’t have the funds to purchase an actual clothes wringer, a mop bucket wringer will work as well.  You need something that will get as much water out as possible to help the clothes dry quicker. You will also need to have a clothes line outside or some sort of rack inside to hand the clothes out to dry.

She also tells about doing dishes:  

Washing dishes would be similar to washing your clothes. Fill one bucket or side of the sink about half full with very warm water and let the dishes soak a bit, wash, then rinse.  A bit of vinegar in your rinse water will cut down on soap suds for both clothes and dishes.


Please read the rest of her article.

Doing laundry the old fashioned way

Here is an article about washing clothing by hand.

http://daily-survival.blogspot.com/2009/02/laundry-by-hand.html

If we were out of power for an extended length of time, you would need variations of these things:  buckets or washtubs, something to agitate the clothing, something to scrub the clothing on, a way to squeeze the water out of the clothes, something to hang up the clothing to dry.

Do you have the supplies needed?

Solar Shower

I happened to buy this Solar Shower for $6 at Walmart the other day, to put in my preparedness supplies.  Coincidentally, the next day we lost our water for 24 hours.  I ended up using the solar shower (I hung it inside my bathroom shower), and it was wonderful.  In fact, the water got so hot I had to add a bunch of cold water to it because it was burning me.

I decided to go back to Walmart and buy several more, to give to all my kids.  I went back and in three days, the price had gone up from $6 to $6.80.  These are plastic, so they are made of petroleum, so they are only going to get more expensive.

The box says that these are not food grade plastic, so you are not supposed to drink the water from them.  But I am going to buy several for myself, so that when we don't have power we will have hot water for doing dishes and for doing laundry.

We have a propane water heater for camping, but it is about the size of a toaster oven and it is heavy, plus it was expensive.  I think this is a much more economical solution.

Wooden Clothespins are Cheap. Get Some.

Picture yourself without power or without water, or both.  You have to handwash the laundry, and then somehow hang the clothing up to dry.

I've tried to do that without clothespins, and it is a joke.  If you lay the clothing over a bush, it will eventually fall on the ground and get all dirty.

If you lay the clothing on the ground, ditto.

So right now, while you have power and water, go to the Walmart Housewares department, near the hangers and laundry baskets, and buy 100 clothespins for $1.97.

This will be a great preparedness item for you during the next disaster.

Could you do without electricity for awhile?

What if a disaster took away our electricity, for a short or a long time?  Would you be able to function?  And if you have a generator, do you have gasoline for it?

We all need to collect non-electrical alternatives for the following:

1. lighting (flashlights, lanterns, candles, etc.)

2. heating (fireplace, kerosene heaters, propane heaters)

3. cooking and heating water (propane grill, fireplace, solar oven, etc.)

4. laundry (laundry detergent and a bucket, clothesline and clothespins)

5. actually there are a lot more but you get the idea.  And remember, with no electricity, stores can't do business.  So you would be living off your food storage.

There was an article today about the coming cycle of solar activity, which warned about the ways the sun can cause electrical grid failure on earth:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bdf9ddce1297325e1b97e06696026e73.111&show_article=1

"At its angriest, the Sun can vomit forth tides of electromagnetic radiation and charged matter known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs......"

"On Earth, power lines, data connections and even oil and gas pipelines are potentially vulnerable.

An early warning of the risk came in 1859, when the biggest CME ever observed unleashed red, purple and green auroras even in tropical latitudes.

The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.

In 1989, a far smaller flare knocked out power from Canada's Hydro Quebec generator, inflicting a nine-hour blackout for six million people.

A workshop in 2008 by US space weather experts, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, heard that a major geomagnetic storm would dwarf the 2005 Hurricane Katrina for costs."

I definitely hope this type of thing doesn't happen again.  But it is always good to be prepared.

Cooking, Laundry, Lighting with No Power

If we are without power because of a hurricane, how are you going to survive?

Keep the fridge closed.
The fridge and freezer will stay cold longer if you don’t open it. Make sure you open it as few times as you can. Also, eat all the refrigerated and frozen food as fast as you can.




Store paper products.
You don’t want to be doing dishes or laundry without power or water, so store enough paper plates, paper towels to see you through.




Have a manual can opener.
Of course your electric can opener won’t work.

Store foods that are easy to prepare or ready to eat, that don’t need refrigeration, to last at least 3 days.

Store baby supplies. Make sure you have enough formula, diapers for your baby, also foods that your small children will eat.

Cook on a grill.
You need to get some way to cook your food. You can get some sort of grill or hibachi to cook outdoors.

Buy fuel and matches.
You could cook with charcoal. You will need lighter fluid and matches, or get MatchLight charcoal and it will light without lighter fluid. Our grill uses a big tank of propane, and our camping stoves use little cans of propane.

Laundry.
You can just wash things out by hand in the sink, or you can buy a regular toilet plunger and plunge your clothes in a bucket.



Hang clothes up to dry.
Buy some clothespins at the dollar store, and get some rope to hang your clothes out to dry.

Lighting without electricity.
You may be faced with 1-9 nights without light, so you need to figure out ways to create light for your family. How are you going to do that?

Candles. One candle will burn for about 35 hours, but it makes a very dim light, and is unsafe around little children.



Lamp and lamp oil. A lamp with lamp oil can be burned in the house, but again, the flame is dangerous around little children.


Flashlights are safe and bright, but the batteries will only power them for so long.
Be sure you have plenty of batteries.

Glowsticks from the Dollar Store.
Something that is very safe around kids are Glow sticks. The dollar store has some really cute shapes right now. Buy the yellow ones, they make a brighter light.

You Can Make Them or Buy Them

In yesterday's post, I told you to watch Lana Richardson's video on Emergency Preparedness.

If you did, you saw her demonstrations of :

the manual clothes washer (made of a plunger and bucket with hole in the lid), the metal stove made from a metal bucket,

the rehydration kit,

the Sanitation Kit toilet/sanitation kit,

the Wonder Box stove (using BeanBag type styrofoam pellets to keep hot foods hot and continue cooking),

the Can O' Heat (made from a roll of toilet paper w/o the cardboard center plus a bottle of rubbing alcohol poured into it, and lit)

and lots of other great ideas. She sells most of that stuff on her own website, but she also gives instructions for making them. So look under products and see the pictures in case you want to make them yourself.

http://www.emergencyhelps.com/Emergency_Helps/Products.html

And I am telling my own kids, Lets make these and give them to each other for Christmas. I want every one of them.

Great Video of Emergency Prep ideas

Wow, Lana Richardson has some great ideas of stuff to be aware of in a disaster! This is an hour long, so let it play while you are doing dishes or paying bills or something. It is well worth watching. I took 6 pages of notes!

http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6255&Itemid=200049

Washing Machine for Emergencies

I just bought this emergency washing machine from Emergency Essentials. It cost $14.95.

It looks a little like a plunger. (In fact, some survivalist books say you can use a clean plunger. But this one has been engineered to do a better job on clothing- see the grill? That keeps the clothes from getting sucked up into the plunger, and creates a vacuum to pull the water through the clothing better.)

You take a 5 gallon bucket and cut a hole in the lid for the handle to stick through. Put water and some laundry detergent in the bucket with the clothing, and beat the clothing like you are churning butter. (If you don't have a lid with a hole in it, you can churn it without a lid, but you have to be more careful not to slosh the water.)

I think it looks like it would do a better job than scrubbing on a washboard, which some of my boys had to do on their missions.