In a pinch, wash your clothes at home.

No matter what sort of emergency you might find yourself in the midst of, there’s one thing for sure, everybody likes clean underwear! Clothes too. There’s no sour outlook that can’t be improved by putting on fresh smelling garments.

Let’s say the power grid is down because the state forget to pay the bill. You’re a squared away modern survivalist and have a nice generator and plenty of water stockpiled but maybe you don’t want to waste the gasoline on washing clothes. Here’s a super-easy way to get those duds smelling like new again.

  1. Let your clothes soak overnight in a bucket of water.
  2. In the morning, wring them out and fill the bucket again with clean water. Add a few drops of dish detergent. Just a little or you’ll end up with way too much suds.
  3. Let them sit for a while, then use a mop bucket wringer to press out the suds and water before hanging them out to dry on a line outside strung between two trees.

If you find your clothes to be really disgusting, you can have an old fashioned washboard on hand to remove the soil. You might not like the extra work and barked knuckles but this tried and true device is great at getting out that deep down dirtiness.

To prevent sun fading, turn your clothes inside out before hanging them up to dry. We don’t suggest you do all your clothes like this from this moment forward just for fun but, in a jam for clean clothes, the method certainly does work.

The Holistic Survival Team

Flickr / Mike Lacon