I have been doing a lot of extra hand washing of laundry the last few days to make up for the weeks of rain we have just been through. Today I finished up by scrubbing and scrubbing an old, off white cotton polo shirt. I was getting pretty tired as using a washboard can be pretty rigorous exercise sometimes and my elbow was aching (washboard elbow anyone?) from all I had already done. That darn shirt was just not coming as clean as I wanted it to. Then I remembered something I had read in one of the Foxfire books. A family in one of the narratives mentioned washing their laundry in the creek and then boiling it for fifteen minutes before hanging it to dry. I figured that those Appalachian folks had gone to all of that extra trouble for a good reason as boiling laundry is certainly not easy in an already taxing life. It must have done something great for their laundry!

So I decided to give it a try. I boiled that shirt for fifteen minutes on top of the stove and it worked! The shirt looked much cleaner and whiter afterwords. I was delighted and happily hung this very clean shirt to dry in the sun.

I just thought I would pass on this little Appalachian-gleaned tip. It is so fun trying these simple measures for myself and discovering through personal experience that they really work. Perhaps you would like to try this one too.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

When you stop to consider rainwater, you realize that it is nothing short of crazy to not collect it somehow!

I have had putting together a rainwater catchment system (gosh, that sound official doesn’t it?) on my list of things to-do for years and years. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, I guess, and neither have we gotten around to footing the bill for special rain barrels or cisterns or whatever other equipment is now considered necessary for “harvesting” the rain. And yet all this time the rain falls and we miss it.

In addition to our snug little 1940 farmhouse, there is another small two-room house just a few yards behind our house. It is rather tumbledown and we use it for storage and to hold tools and feed and so on. We all call it “the granny house” only because our then 9 year old started calling it that when we moved in. We understand nothing about why it is there but it does have a nice metal roof and is tucked under two very large chestnut trees. In the fall, the chestnuts fall off and bounce off that roof with a loud thumpity-bump before they smartly smack the ground but I digress. In the spring, the snow on it melts slowly and cascades down to the ground with no organized results whatsoever.

A couple of weeks ago, I was investigating a new publication by Yesterday’s Classics called The Sandman, His Farm Stories by William J. Hopkins (find it on the bottom of the page in the lefthand column). This is a collection of bedtime stories told over and over again to a young boy sometime before 1902 when this book was first published. Each story is very small, proceeds very slowly and provides each little detail of the actions and way of country life from earlier in the last the century. It is almost hypnotizing to read these carefully paced stories but for me it is also fascinating because learning the details of that way of life is important to me.

The first chapter is called The Oxen Story and is about fetching water with which to wash the clothes. After describing the farmhouse, it proceeds thusly:

Not far from the kitchen door was a well, with a bucket tied by a rope to the end of a great long pole. And when they wanted water, they let the bucket down into the well and pulled it up full of water. They used this water to drink, and to wash faces and hands, and to wash the dishes; but it wasn’t good to wash clothes, because it wouldn’t make good soap-suds. To get water to wash the clothes, they had a great enormous hogshead at the corner of the house. And when it rained, the rain fell on the roof, and ran down the roof to the gutter, and ran down the gutter to the spout, and ran down the spout to the hogshead. And when they wanted water to wash the clothes, they took some of the water out of the hogshead.

But when it had not rained for a long time, there was no water in the hogshead. Then they got out the drag and put a barrel on it, and the old oxen came out from the barn, and put their heads down low; and Uncle John put the yoke over their necks, and put the bows under and fastened them, and hooked the chain of the drag to the yoke.

See this? It was unthinkable to them to use well water to wash their clothes. Isn’t that interesting? As much other work as they had to do, if they ran out of rainwater in the hogshead (this was a large cask or barrel, by the way, which also became a unit of measure), they hooked up the oxen and went to the river to get another barrel of soft water. In fact the rest of this story details exactly that and ends with:

And the next morning, when they wanted water to wash their clothes, there was the barrel of water, all ready.

Even now, many people know that it is easier to wash in soft water (i.e. rainwater) than in hard water (i.e. well water). Some folks go to the trouble of installing water softeners but how many would go to the trouble of actually collecting the appropriate water? And how aware are we of how much better it is to use rainwater for washing clothes if our clothes are always washed for us by a machine hidden away in a dark corner of our house?

This passage from The Sandman stayed on my mind these last weeks. Then last week it snowed quite a bit while Friday was warm and sunny. I was outside hanging laundry when my attention was drawn to the steady dripping of the snow melting off the roof of the granny house. Somehow I just couldn’t stand it any more and was galvanized into action. I went tearing into the basement and ransacked the place looking for empty storage bins. I found two large ones, raced back outside with them and put them under the best spots of melted snow water coming off of the roof. By the next day, there was enough water in them to do one load of laundry.

Yesterday my husband carried the bins in for me and poured the water into the wash tub and the two rinse buckets. Watching him pour that fresh water into our hitherto only filled by well/tap water vessels filled me with awe. It was a gift purely and freely given. All I had to do was stick a bin outside and precious soft water was waiting there next day. It seemed almost magical or Divine or something. Perhaps rain water has a charge that well water just doesn’t. I don’t know. I didn’t expect to have such a strong reaction.

Then came the next reaction - that water was ice cold! It was so cold that it took some time for the laundry soap to disperse. It was cold enough that my thyroid deprived self felt a a shock so my husband helped out a bit with the laundering. I couldn’t help myself, though, and I helped with the rinsing. I just wanted to experience that water. So even with all of the snowy cold, the clothes sparkled and I was put into a state of wonder.

In the summer, this will be easier for me because not only will the water be freely given but so will enough heat to at least bring the rain water to something close to body temperature. Two gifts from nature just to wash our clothes. Imagine that. It makes me feel so grateful.

It’s not like I am morally opposed to using well water or anything. It just occurs to me, though, that well water is taken by extraction or force while rain water is freely given. Perhaps we should at least attempt to use the latter first before falling back on the former?

Rain for uses other than watering gardens is one of those things that is easy to overlook. It is easy to miss the fact that it is one of the most significant gifts freely given by Nature to all of creation here. It is easy to overlook until you stop to consider rain water …

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

I am sure that those of you who hang your laundry out to dry even in the winter are familiar with the problem I am about to mention.

Laundry hung out during the winter does not dry all that fast. On a warmish, breezy day, if you get it hung early enough, some of it may actually dry completely. Some of it won’t though. If, like me, you are combining washing your laundry by hand with homeschooling and baking all of your bread, you may find that on some days you don’t get it hung out all that early which just compounds the winter conditions. On other days, it is too cold for the laundry to dry anyway. The water in the fabric freezes and then it takes forever to dry. (One remedy for this particular problem is to go out and hit your laundry with a stick, knocking out the ice. Then much more of the water still remaining in the fabric has a chance to evaporate. I personally try to dry my laundry inside on days that are that cold as the wood burning stove would definitely be blazing away anyway.)

Anyway, at the ends of such half and half kinds of winter days in which the weather is half and half and the laundry itself is half dry and half not, I have a very hard time figuring out if any given item is just cold or if it is still damp. Do I hang it to dry some more or fold it and put it away? I probably comment on this every single time I bring the laundry in during the winter months.

About an hour ago, I set the floor dryer up by the wood burning stove in the kitchen and started to sort through the laundry I had just brought in. Carolyn, my 17 year old, was standing at the kitchen sink finishing up making the butter. I exclaimed for the millionth time, “Gosh, I just can’t tell if this shirt is cold or damp.”

She turned to me and said, “Rub it against your cheek. We just learned that in my pottery class. If you put a clay piece that is still damp in the kiln, it will explode. So you have to be very sure that it is completely dry. Our cheeks are more sensitive than our fingers so we learned to rub a piece against our cheek to make very sure that it is dry before firing it.”

“Oh. OK. That makes sense.”

So I tried it. I rubbed a few pieces of clothing against my cheek. They felt dry to my fingers and to my cheek. Hmmm … However, I was also aware that I could really feel the weave of the fabric against my cheek in a way that I couldn’t with my fingers. Interesting. Next I picked up a big shirt of my husband’s. I felt it with my fingers. Damp? Cold? Couldn’t tell. I rubbed it against my cheek and TA DA - it was clearly damp! I almost jumped it was so obviously damp against my cheek!

Wonderful. Now I have a method for determining damp/cold and another small yet niggling problem of daily life is solved. I am grateful for this simple (and completely portable!) solution and wanted to make note of it here and share it with any of you who struggle with this same difficulty with winter laundry. I am also grateful for the “associative property” of nature. Many solutions are there if we observe nature closely and then correctly apply what we learn to what appears to us as separate categories of life (but probably really aren’t).

Finally I want to say, “Thank you, Carolyn.” It obviously takes a family to raise a mother.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

There are two particular sorts of sounds associated with hand washing our laundry I love. They are a kind of a slapping sound and a sweet whisper.

Set up for sound #1:
You fill the hot water and soap in your wash tub, soak the clothes, plunge the clothes until you are nearly breathless. You scrub them on the washboard and wring. You drop them into your first rinse bucket of more hot water and plunge. Wring. Drop them into your second rinse bucket and plunge. Wring extra well…

Sound #1:
… and toss those well-worked clothes with a wet, heavy satisfying slapping sound into a basket set out to catch the clean, clean, heavy clothes on their way out to be run through the wringer and then hung to dry. I just love that slapping sound. So satisfying. So indicative of patient work and the light dryness to come.

Set up to sound #2:
Oldest daughter and youngest daughter become hand washing laundry buddies. Together they plunge and splash while listening to Enya. Oldest daughter teaches youngest daughter songs they then sing together while washing some of the family laundry. Oldest daughter is good at directing the activity. Youngest daughter specializes in plunging with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm. Oldest daughter leaves town for several days. Within moments of her return home, youngest daughter rushes up to me and whispers in my ear,

Sound #2:
“Can Carolyn and I go hand wash some laundry together now?”

No matter how tired I may sometimes get from doing by hand what most Americans do by machine these days, I could never give up those sounds. They are too wonderful.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

About a week or more ago, my boys did a father-enforced deep clean on their rooms and finished switching out their summer clothes for winter clothes. This resulted in a sparkling room for them but a rather large pile of laundry for me.

When laundry day dawned (for it is still a weather-based activity for us), I was dismayed at the formidable mountain of laundry waiting for little ole hand washing me to tackle. My husband responded by pointing out that we still have our old washing machine in the basement. He thought it would be a good idea to hook it up, use it to wash all of the extra laundry this one time, but just stand there through its cycles to stop the machine as it started to flood.

Now that was a very logical, thoughtful suggestion. But you know what? I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. Even though hand washing our laundry takes so much time (and would especially take so much time in this circumstance) and I get absolutely starving from doing it (!) and I am usually in pain for a couple of days afterward (I am plagued by loosey-goosey joints), I just couldn’t go back to using a machine even in the face of an unusually large pile of laundry. I just couldn’t.

I said, “Thank you but … well, I would know that those clothes aren’t really clean.” (He understood what I said and, I think, understood what I couldn’t quite say.)

OK. Yes, it was partly that I guess. But, honestly, it was much more than that. There is something about doing laundry this way. I don’t know if I can quite put it into words. It is the elemental simplicity of it. It is the sound of the water and the rhythm of the movements. It is the quiet attention you can pay to each piece of clothing and each beloved family member to whom it belongs. It is the feeling of connection with brothers and sisters all over the world who wash their clothing in a similar manner. It is working together with enthusiastic children and strong, broad shouldered husbands to accomplish this necessary task of daily living. It is laughter and water and prayer all rolled up into one “mundane” activity.

What else can I say? I think that it is the naturalness of it. Yes, that’s it. The naturalness of it. Hand washing the laundry and hanging it up to dry feels congruent. It feels right. It feels … well, natural.

A slapdash, machine-made, apparent efficiency cannot make up for laughter and water and prayer and naturalness. All the machine really does is move clothing mindlessly from one pile to another. Hand washing the laundry, on the other hand, always holds the potential to increase awareness, build muscles and character, and extend love. It fits into a natural day like the in fabulous quilt above. See the block showing hand washing laundry? It is all of a piece.

I never, ever would have guessed this on my own. Only doing the work, paying attention to the actual experience, and submitting to the discipline of it showed me. I am truly grateful for myself personally, and am so glad that the children will grow up with more naturalness in their lives. Functioning a bit more naturally will come naturally to them. I view that as a good thing.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Hand washing laundry is as ancient a practice as wearing clothes made of fabric. Furthermore, and perhaps very surprising to Americans who generally only know about washing machines and will travel miles to use one if necessary, millions of people all over the world still wash their clothing by hand.

While using water is a constant across time and cultures, other aspects vary. Agitating or bending and twisting the fabric to help loosen dirt is accomplished in ways as varied as rubbing and twisting, beating against a rock, beating the fabric with a wooden bat, or using a washboard. Additions that help the water work more effectively have ranged over time from fermented urine (used extensively by the Romans; it was the ammonia salts in it that helped whiten togas) to soaproot to handmade laundry soap to modern day chemical based detergents.

Regardless of which method people are using to hand wash their laundry, I know that no matter when I am hand washing my family’s laundry, people all over the world are also hand washing theirs. My imagination wanders to the various cultures I know something about. I wonder about the lives of all the people squatting down over water and soap, working, working, working to get their clothes clean. I think about their hand movements. I think about how they often are washing together in groups. I think about how their children are hanging about or helping or playing. Images go through my mind and prayers go through my heart. I feel a deep sense of connectedness to brothers and sisters all over this fair green planet, all using her resources of water and sun and time to clean away the grime of every day life. With practiced movements and ceaseless conversations about the shared sufferings and shared celebrations of community life, people everywhere use their minds and hands to accomplish the sublime task of getting just a little bit cleaner.

Two Sundays ago, I spent a couple of hours going through videos on YouTube that show people from around the world hand washing their laundry. I really enjoyed watching all of them and I learned a great deal from them as well. A few particular images were before my mind’s eye the last time I did our laundry. Those images kept me company and added a deep resonance to my somewhat arduous task. I could hear the laughter from far away and feel the tears and only wonder at the grace of the movements. Down below are links to a few of the videos I discovered. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did and for those of you who wash your laundry by hand already, I hope you feel your sense of connection expand greatly. After all, we are all trying to get clean and Nature, as always, provides the necessities.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

The Ukraine - such vigorous use of a washboard!

Nicaragua and Brazil - The image of the girl laughing in the one from Nicaragua stays with me.

Various locations in Africa -

This one from Bangledesh pulls at the heart strings -

The Philippines -

Here are some from China. Notice how nicely the little girl does her share of the work in the first video -

And, finally, here are several from India. Notice the very beautiful hand movements you can see in so many of them -

And this last one from India with a mother and child playing together -

Like many of the “living simply” tasks I am learning to do around the homestead, I find that hand washing laundry is done at a pace and with a physical rhythm that encourages contemplation. Also because water is involved, I find that my thoughts really flow. One of the trains of thought that has come to me through several washing sessions has to do with the myriad ways that hand washing laundry is similar to homeschooling. While homeschooling is much more common now than it used to be, hand washing laundry is not yet common again here in the United States. As a matter of fact, I have seen a number of people who engage in homeschooling decrying those who also engage in hand washing laundry. This is kind of interesting because most folks nowadays would decry both with no thought of distinguishing between the two. So stepping back a bit, what can I say from experience are some of the similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling?

1. Both activities require that you re-arrange your life in ways that run counter to the dictates of the modern materials/money economy. Interestingly, since these are both age old activities, practicing them at this point in history requires bold thinking, self-discipline and a creative approach to problem solving.

2. Both are giant steps towards self-sufficiency. All benefits that accrue from becoming more self sufficient in one’s daily activities flow from both hand washing laundry and homeschooling.

3. With both, you build skills that you will never forget and would never otherwise learn. Once you know how to teach a child to read or how to wash their dress to sparkling cleanness with your very own hands, you will always know how to do those things and will be able to do them anywhere, any time.

4. Both homeschooling and hand washing laundry create the space to pray about and devote yourself in service to the needs of others. As such both are, therefore, character building and have tremendous potential to deepen the bonds between family members as well as members of the community.

5. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling are greatly enhanced if approached from a “teamwork” perspective. If the family works as a team to clean clothes or as a team to discover what it even means to be “educated” and works as a team to become truly educated together, then adventure, beauty, love and Divine inspiration may be your constant supports as you undertake either of these daily activities of life.

6. Carried out with awareness, both homeschooling and hand washing laundry demand fewer natural resources than conventional approaches to either education or laundering.

7. Hand washing laundry and homeschooling are both pathways to discovery and connection. People undertake both all over the world so a brotherly feeling of connection is waiting there to be experienced. I will write more about this aspect in another post. Furthermore, simple truths have been hidden away gradually and, at times, willfully by those promulgating the conventional approaches. How many people know now that you can get clothes much cleaner on your own than by using washing machines? How many people know now that a loving parent can teach their children how to read? How many people know now that artificial chemicals and so-called fragrances are the opposite of clean? How many people know now that education is best conducted in an atmosphere of wonder and love? Peeling away conventional attitudes and approaches to both laundering and educating can lead to delightful and unanticipated discoveries.

8. We are hardwired to find satisfaction in primary labor, i.e. the kind of work that is directly related to survival and real, natural life. Our economic engine is predicated upon us turning our backs on our true natures. It forcefully keeps us lulled in a state of perpetual forgetfulness about our true abilities and our higher purpose. However, I can say from vivid personal experience that taking the time to become reacquainted with the primary labors of life brings peaceful satisfaction brimming to the surface and spilling over into smiles, affectionate touches and contented sighs. The sight of honestly clean clothes ruffling in a breeze, the sound of milk hitting the milk pail, the experience of a child’s understanding blooming before your eyes are experiences that are wonderfully fresh and yet deeply remembered. There really is no substitute. The more of these activities you can include in your daily life, the more satisfied and confident you may feel.

9. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling increase flexibility and expand your range of choices. Now if a person’s goal is to engage in secondary labor (i.e. most jobs which are sort of made up and have nothing to do with creating food or clothes or shelter), to earn ever more money, to increase prestige and to have more things, then - no - neither hand washing laundry nor home educating are the way to go because they dramatically decrease the flexibility needed for those sorts of endeavors. However, if living a natural, unassuming, deeply intimate, conserving sort of life is your goal then both hand washing laundry and homeschooling expand your options considerably. You can wash clothes based upon the weather. You can wash inside or outside. You can work alone or with others. You can decide how much elbow grease to put into a particular stain or pair of work jeans or not. You can use equipment or not. You can make small adjustments throughout the process because you are consciously a part of the entire process. It is the same with homeschooling. You can choose educational goals, content, scheduling, exact location… everything. You get to choose everything based upon your style as teacher, the propensities and learning styles of the students, budget, other daily tasks that must be accomplished, spiritual goals or not and so on. As any of these conditions change, you are free to change with them because while doing it yourself is more work, doing it yourself comes largely free of institutional rigidity and hindrances. You are flexible and free to respond to inspiration.

10. One of the most startling similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling is the wildly successful outcome that comes from giving individual attention. With both activities, individual attention is perhaps the greatest key to success. Examining each item of clothing in the bright light of the sun, assessing what sort of treatment it needs and then supplying said treatment is the key to keeping everything in the best possible condition and making it last the longest. Prayerfully considering the needs and aptitudes of each child and then stretching as a parent/teacher to meet those needs and aptitudes goes further in making it possible for each child to become what they should become than anything else. Simple systems carried out with modest resources generally encourage the magnifying glass of the human mind to be pointed towards the needful. Improved outcomes nearly always follow.

Honestly, I find striving to live simply a gold mine of ideas, discoveries, insights, and opportunities. This seems to be true no matter what the “living simply” activity is (and is one of the biggest secrets of our times I might add). In any case, it is certainly true with both hand washing laundry and homeschooling. May we all boldly and yet humbly step away from institutional thinking and discover what we can through the profitable use of our own hearts, minds and hands.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

We have been hand washing all of our laundry for about six weeks now and it is going pretty well. We are still fine tuning how we do things but we do have enough of an effective system going to share what we have learned so far.

Equipment: For our wash tubs, we are using two large Rubbermaid bins. We use these simply because we already had them. Having used them all this time, however, I can say that we are looking forward to getting some real wash tubs some day - preferably ones on legs. Anyway, we use the two large Rubbermaid storage bins for washing and scrubbing (which my husband set up on cinder blocks for me to help spare my back) and we use two 5 gallon paint/food storage plastic pails with bale handles for the two rinses. You can get these at hardware stores. We find them to be a perfect size and the handle is really helpful for hauling the water away to dump on select garden locations.

For agitating the wash and rinse water, we are very happy using the Rapid Washer from Lehman’s. It works much, much better than a regular hardware store plunger as it moves much more water with each plunge and it fits perfectly into the 5 gallon pails. You occasionally need to use a mallet to pound the handle back down into the metal head of the plunger.

For scrubbing, we are using a glass washboard also purchased from Lehman’s. They note that the glass washboards last the longest and that they are by far their best seller so I went for one of those. I have always been “stain removal” challenged. I don’t like using chemicals and I have never found anything that really works all that well at removing stains anyway so I just sort of gave up ages ago. Using a bar of soap, water, a washboard and elbow grease, however, is like magic. Honestly! So many stains just disappear before your very eyes. I have read others comment upon the fact that items they would have otherwise thrown away were saved through the ministrations of a washboard and a few minutes of vigorous effort. The washboard at the bottom left of the photo is the one we use. (I might mention here that brass washboards are used primarily as musical instruments, in case you were wondering.)

Wringing as much water as possible out of each item shortens drying time dramatically. I read many comments here and there on the web about women wrecking their hands and wrists from years of wringing out clothes. Well, one of my wrists is already wrecked so official equipment was called for. I bought this wringer which Lehman’s sells but got it here instead for about $70 less. Apparently these wringers are used at car washes so you can find them for sale through various businesses other than just Amish ones.

I am still using (infinitesimally) small quantities at a time of Charlie’s soap for washing. I use so little at a time now that I think my remaining supply will last for another six months at least. However, when the bottom of the container is finally in sight, I will start making my own laundry soap. As for the bar soap to use for removing stains, I still don’t have a good bar I like yet. I will grab a bar of Dr. Bronner’s or something the next chance I get. Someday I intend to make my own laundry bar soap. Someday…

Method: To fill the bins and pails in our outdoor laundry room, my husband rigged up a hose that goes from the utility sink in the basement through a hole in a window screen and out to the outdoor laundry room. I am very grateful to be able to wash everything with warm water that I am neither heating myself nor hauling. It is not always easy running up and down the basement steps to turn the water on and off in a timely fashion but, hey, the children perform that task admirably. So our method is as follows:

1. Fill one bin about a third of the way (too full and we get soaked when plunging). Fill the other bin just six inches deep or so and place the washboard at one end and the bar of soap at the other. Fill the 5 gallon pails about halfway. Put maybe a 1/4 tsp. of Charlie’s soap in and swish it around so that it is well mixed.

2. Sort the laundry to be washed by color, heaviness and dirtiness. Put the cleanest, lightest clothes into the wash water first. Plunge a bit and let soak a little if there is time. Then plunge vigorously for two to three minutes. I have read that you should agitate the clothes and water for 10 minutes, but I just don’t strength enough in me to do that frankly. If any item is stained, toss it into the washboard bin.

3. Squeeze the clothes out and toss into the first rinse pail. Agitate enthusiastically for 25 plunges or so. Squeeze out thoroughly and toss into second rinse pail and repeat. Wring out and toss into a basket of clothes waiting to go through the wringer. Rinsing at least twice is a big deal and the key to success to ending up with sparkling clean laundry. Sometimes we have to rinse certain items more times than twice. We always try to find a balance between clean rinse water, water conservation and reasonable time investment.

4. Work through any clothes that have been tossed into the washboard bin. Rub a very small amount of soap onto any stains or dirty areas and rub vigorously on the washboard. Rinse and toss into first rinse pail. I want to emphasize the hint to not use too much bar soap for this exercise. Rinsing out excess soap is trying and wasteful.

5. Put all items through the wringer. It helps to wring things out in some kind of order so that you can keep the wringer at the same setting. You want it as tight as you can get it for thin things like dish towels and shirts and so on. But you loosen it to wring out things like thick bath towels or jeans or jackets. I have learned to put many items through the wringer two or three times in a row to get them really quite dry. If you fold the item in half, it not only effectively increases the pressure and effectiveness of the wringer, it has the effect of pressing the item. We are now lining up three dish towels together at a time, folding them in half and putting them through the wringer all at once several times. They come out looking ironed and they dry on the line in a hurry. This is a good place in the whole laundry process to experiment to discover more effective methods Cheaper By the Dozen style.

6. Hang everything to dry and feel more satisfied from doing a load of wash than you ever thought possible.

7. Definitely include all family members in this weekly event. Children gain strength and precision. Husband’s feel good lending their broad shoulders. Bonding ensues. Teamwork issues are spotted and ironed out. And then everyone gets to feel incredibly satisfied surveying the family laundry tidily hung from the lines and gently flapping in the breeze.

8. Once the hand done, real soap-cleaned, individually wrung, sun-dried laundry is brought inside on a regular basis, you may notice two positive effects in your home. The first is that everyone will make darn sure that these heroically cleaned clothes are put away double time. The second is that family members may automatically start generating less laundry due to the subtle, natural process known variously as the awareness raising, consciousness expanding, gratitude generating affects of hard work.

To spend some leisurely time with us as we do our laundry together outside, sit back and watch the following videos. Oh, and on the fifth video my husband shares some great thoughts about the moderation that arises naturally from working within natural systems and resources. I really appreciate what he has to say there.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Years and years ago, I read a brief article in Countryside magazine written by a woman who washed her laundry by hand. She explained that her wringer washer was set up outside next to a creek and she rhapsodized about washing clothes to the melodies of bird song. The image created in my mind by her writing and experience has stayed with me to this day. Washing clothes outside by hand seemed so refreshing and satisfying, by her report, and I secretly wanted to experience this for myself.

Quite a few years later - oh about four years ago or so - our washing machine broke. I very timidly showed my husband the wringer washer in Lehman’s and wondered aloud about replacing our washer with that? He very spontaneously and energetically let me know that the idea was nuts and the next day we went together to find a nice, normal, serviceable, inexpensive washing machine. In the years that followed which included moving and setting up our first homestead, I was grateful to him for making that call because there was already just so much work to do. However, my very odd secret wish to wash our laundry by hand outside never went totally away. However I didn’t have time to think about it so it didn’t matter.

A few years passed which saw us move again and set up this homestead. No end to the work. Yikes. So tired. Yikes. And then a few months ago, I stumbled upon several wonderful blogs such as Lentils and Rice, Ante Family Agrarians, A Process Driven Wife. These headed-towards-off-the-grid living ladies were all starting to wash their laundry by hand! Interesting. Here, for instance, is the Laundry Adventures category at Lentils and Rice. I think I discovered all of this when she was at about here and Kris Ante was about here. They both had nice simple explanations about how they were doing their laundry, together with clear photographs and rave reviews about the results of their labors. My husband happened to be sitting in the room while I read through these posts (and I should mention here that we had just had our washing machine flood the basement due to human error, if I recall correctly). I said, “Oh look, these woman are washing their laundry by hand with plungers and buckets.” He glanced at the photos, jumped to his feet and said, “You wanna try it?” “Well, uh, it just so happens that I do,” I replied barely keeping up with him as he dashed down to the basement to grab empty containers, a plunger and the laundry bin.

My husband’s enthusiastic approach to doing our first load of hand washing was to dump everything in the laundry basket into the wash water. Ahem … some running of colors ensued which gave rise to his clever invention of dying shirts with good old Virginia clay. I will have to post about that sometime because he turned his very nice, but now red streaked, Lands End shirt a gorgeous color. It looks great on him. Anyway, we washed and we hung to dry and it was fun. We agreed to try again another day.

A day or two later we tried another load. This time time rather too many clothes were dumped in all at once and that created its own sort of difficulty. I clearly needed to take this task in hand and study out how to do it the most effectively. We got through that load, however, and I went off to do a little more research on hand washing protocol. Right around this time, our washing machine again flooded the basement only with no human error involved. To this day, we have no idea why it flooded. There was a washing machine left here in this house which we had used for quite a while. My husband took out our old machine and hooked up the “left here” machine. To our astonishment (read that as anguished astonishment because the clean up involved was no laughing matter), this machine also flooded the basement. Several inches of water covered almost the entire basement floor. We have no idea why.

It appeared that what started out as sort of a lark quickly became an activity we were sort of pushed into doing full time. No money, no washing machines, plenty of dirty clothes, and several blog posts full of hand washing inspiration added up to officially becoming a hand washing family. Paul and I shook our heads and simply got organized. Hand washing the family laundry was obviously here to stay.

For various reasons, we had to sell our little Toyota at this time. That was kind of a hard decision to make but one of the things we decided to do with the proceeds was purchase official hand washing equipment. Doing the laundry for eight people on a farm is not a lightweight chore and I was going to need all the help I could get. I will share what I got and where I got it in a separate post.

We have washed all of our laundry by hand for about six weeks now I guess. Almost all of it has been done outside in what I call our “outdoor laundry room.” It was kind of tough for me at first because it was so physically grueling. My joints are far too loose. All the pounding and other repetitive motions did a number on my joints plus bending over so much did a number on my back. I hate feeling too weak to accomplish an essential task so I looked forward to gaining strength and a positive rhythm with time. I just hung in there.

I am pleased to say that actually we have all gained strength and a nice rhythm from doing the laundry together outside. The children can and do help a lot. Some of them can even do quite a bit of it on their own. Sometimes my husband helps and that is really great. The other day he and I worked together outside for a long while, plunging and rinsing and wringing and hanging. It was so pleasant to be out in the sunshine and bird song working together quietly on a mutually shared task. Very beautiful. A very natural way to spend time. And the quiet was lovely.

The latest development is that he and I took our trusty old pick-up truck to town today and bought a half ton of gravel. The “floor” of the laundry room was getting too muddy and I have wanted to put gravel down in several other key spots, like in front of the hen house, for a long while so off we went. Our ten year old has been steadily shoveling out the gravel for hours now so we have a utilitarian floor covering for our outdoor laundry room as well as a margin of safety in front of hen house, milking barn and gates.

Our next development will be to shift laundry operations to the basement when it gets too cold outside. We get the hot water for doing our laundry from the faucet down there anyway. And we have a second wood burning stove Paul is going to hook up so that it will be warm and toasty for both the laundress and the drying clothes. We have yet to figure out a way to install the wringer down there. We will have to see how that aspect works out.

Robin Brashear of Prepare and Pray fame told me that they lived near Amish families when they lived in Wisconsin a while back. It was apparently not uncommon for them to build laundry rooms off the side of their houses with water, a drain and a wood burning stove. It gets mighty, mighty cold there in the winter so they found a way to do their laundry with the same methods but under shelter. So while it does not get quite that cold here usually, we will be doing something similar in the basement.

I have several more posts to go about this topic of hand washing laundry so I will see you there!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

I didn’t imagine that there could be much more to say about hanging clothes out on a line to dry but I didn’t anticipate the change in weather here either. I notice that when you start to do something in a way that is more natural or more simple, no matter how small or seemingly obvious that thing is - there is always a story and a learning curve associated with the transition. Apparently hanging laundry out to dry is no exception.

While having our dryer break has catapulted me into hanging all of our laundry to dry, I have been hanging out most of our things for years. It brings me to a new attention to the weather. A warmish, sunny, breezy or even windy day becomes a great day to do laundry and I get into gear to match the opportunity the weather is providing. For the uninitiated I should explain that a breeze or a wind not only dries your laundry more quickly, the agitation it provides also makes your laundry softer. So windy days are a good thing for hanging out laundry, right?

Well, they always have been until moving here to the mountains anyway. For the past couple of weeks we have had 20 - 30 mile an hour winds every day. Yes, that is every day. (I am vaguely remembering stories about men going mad from Sirocco winds but I am not mentioning those to family members lest they become inspired to do the same.) Yesterday was sunny and relatively warm, I guess you could say, so I started hanging up laundry just as fast as I could. It turned out that the things that I most needed to have hang outside such as my husband’s jeans and big, thick bath towels just couldn’t stay outside. The gusting winds together with the weight of these items was too much. The clothes pins were breaking apart so quickly that I knew my husband’s jeans were going to end up in the next county if I didn’t take them down and bring them inside. So I found myself in the odd position of having to take down heavy laundry that was already nicely hung up on a seemingly effective windy day because an-almost-spring-day here in the mountains apparently is too windy to hang laundry out on.

So the lessons on hanging out laundry continue to appear:

When it is hot, hang your laundry out early in the morning.

Anyone knows not to hang laundry out while it is raining, of course. But it turns out that on menacingly cloudy days you actually need to somehow judge whether or not it really will rain or whether it just looks that way but won’t. If you guess wrong you either end up with dripping laundry or find that you have wasted a perfectly good laundry drying day through having been intimidated by dark skies.

Then there is my more recent lesson about not letting laundry sit outside in the laundry basket during freezing weather. You must hang it up immediately or face the consequences of laundry frozen into crumples.

Now I discover that I also have to judge wind strength because on any given day here anyway there can apparently be too much of a good thing in terms of wind.  I can hang light weight things out when there are gusting winds but heavy things must be hung in the basement.

Today there are gusting winds once again but it is also raining. Lucky me. That means I don’t have to magically read the sky, gauge wind speed or shield myself from the elements. Mother Nature has decided for me so I get a little rest before assessing tomorrow’s weather!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie