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Lamp & Larder

Practical self-reliance for ordinary households

3At home when the grid is down

Clothes washing in a grid-down world: the two-bucket kit

A washing machine is one of the first appliances a long outage takes away. Two buckets and a plunger will do the job, slowly.

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Most households never think about the washing machine until it stops. In an outage that lasts a week or more, dirty clothes pile up fast, and wearing the same socks for days is how blisters and skin infections start. A hand-powered backup costs very little and packs into a single bucket stack.

The device below is the old bucket-and-plunger washer. The plunger works like the agitator in a top-loading machine, pushing soapy water through the fabric over and over.

You will need

  • Two 5-gallon food-grade buckets and one lid
  • A toilet plunger, bought new and kept only for laundry
  • Liquid laundry detergent, plus a stain stick if you like
  • White vinegar
  • A length of rope or clothesline
  • Clothespins

Putting the kit together

  1. Drill a hole in the center of the lid, just wide enough for the plunger handle to pass through. Start small and widen it; a snug fit keeps the splashing down.
  2. Load one bucket with the detergent, stain stick, vinegar, clothesline, clothespins and the plunger.
  3. Nest that bucket inside the empty one, then set the lid on top with the plunger handle poking up through the hole.
  4. Put the stack somewhere dry until you need it. Check the detergent now and then, since liquid soap can separate or leak over a few years.

Washing a load

  1. Unpack the bucket. Fill both buckets between half and three-quarters full, enough water to cover the clothes completely.
  2. Squeeze a small amount of detergent into one bucket. That one is for washing. Too much soap only means more rinsing.
  3. Pour about half a cup of vinegar into the second bucket. That one is for rinsing, and the vinegar helps lift leftover soap out of the fibers.
  4. Put a few garments into the wash bucket, thread the plunger handle through the lid and snap the lid down.
  5. Pump the plunger for two or three minutes, longer for work clothes or muddy jeans.
  6. Lift the clothes out and wring them hard.
  7. Move them to the rinse bucket and plunge again the same way.
  8. Wring them once more and hang them on the line.
  9. Carry on with the next load until the wash water is too murky to be useful.

A single bucket will do if that is all you have. Wash, pour the soapy water out, refill, add the vinegar and rinse.

A few cautions

Never add chlorine bleach to a bucket that has vinegar in it, or the other way round. Acid and bleach together release chlorine gas. If whites need bleach, do them in a separate wash with plain water and rinse well before any vinegar goes near them.

Pour used wash water on bare ground well away from wells, streams and vegetable beds, and never into a storm drain. In cold weather, hang clothes indoors near a heat source you are already running rather than leaving them to freeze on the line, and keep them clear of any open flame.