Life as a Spectator Sport

It occurred to me, after reading back over it, that my post on using baking soda really doesn't say anything about how to clean a non-electric (presumably post-apocalypse) home.

So here are some tips. These are methods I grew up with and use now, so they do work.

• You won't have paper towels, so any piece of cloth that isn't currently part of a garment or a bedcovering becomes a cleaning rag of some sort. Soft absorbent clean fabric is the most desirable (people who remember them will really regret the loss of cloth diapers!).
  
  Rags that are used on kitchen surfaces are kept strictly separate from rags that are used on floors or for other dirty applications. You might have a pail under the kitchen sink for "clean" rags and another one in the bathroom for "dirty" rags.
  
  Hand towels and dish towels are a mainstay of the non-electric kitchen. Brightly colored terrycloth hand towels (terrycloth is the loopy stuff) keep your hands dry and mop up water spills on counters and (clean) floors. White smooth-woven (not terrycloth) cotton dish towels dry off the dishes before you put them away. I know it's the fashion to leave your dishes in the dishrack to dry--supposedly this means fewer germs on them. I don't have that much counter space, so my dishes are dried and put away, and the dishrack is washed off and stacked on its side under the sink. This also means that the dishrack gets cleaned regularly, which I personally think does more to eliminate germs than leaving the dishes to air-dry.
  
  Terrycloth hand towels can often be found in thrift stores, but of course any large department store has them too. White cotton dish towels may not turn up as often in thrift stores, but Walmart and Target both carry them. Sometimes they're called bar towels (bartenders use them to dry glasses, because they don't leave lint behind). Many of the housewares catalogs carry them too. In addition to drying your dishes, they also make excellent soft dustcloths when they finally develop too many holes to be used for towels.
  
  If you have Great-Aunt Mary's linen dish towels, my inclination would be to embroider something pretty on them and use them for placemats, rather than drying the dishes with them. Cotton is the most absorbent fiber, which of course is what you need when you're drying anything.
  
  Speaking of kitchen fabrics, learn to knit or crochet now, or become good friends with someone who does, so you'll have handmade dishcloths when you can no longer buy sponges.
  
  
• Large bowls and basins are essential. I have seven or eight of them--two dishpans, two similar but larger plastic basins that are used for laundry, and an assortment of very large plastic, stainless steel and china bowls. With them you can carry and use water much more easily than if you only have small ones. Several heavy plastic buckets are also important (for the aforementioned rags, among other things). If you don't have these things now, the thought of buying all of them may be daunting. Just pick up one item each time you buy groceries, and spread the cost over several weeks or even months. Plastic is inexpensive and will last a long time if it's taken care of.
  
  
• Washing dishes starts out not with hot water and soap, but with scraping the plates. I was speaking to a friend about washing dishes by hand, and she said, "I tried that, but there was so much gunk in the dishpan that it really grossed me out. My dishwasher gets rid of all that stuff." That's why you scrape the plates. But even before that (and this is harder than scraping), you have to get through to your family that one doesn't leave food on their plates. I'm tired of hearing people say that children shouldn't be forced to eat everything if they don't want it. Children should be told not to put it on their plate if they don't want it, and parents should be saying, "Are you really sure you can eat that much, because if you don't finish it now, you'll be eating it for your next meal." And also "If you're not sure you'll like that, take just a tiny bit and try it first." That's how you have clean plates at the end of the meal.
  
  But there will still be little bits and pieces, and that's what you scrape off before it goes into your dishwater. It goes to the compost pile if you don't have chickens (it's hard to have both--chickens are voracious consumers of table scraps). In the winter, I liquify it with some water in the blender (I have a hand-cranked blender, but I'll admit I don't use it now as long as I'm able to use the electric one), and pour it over house plants and on the garden beds.
  
  There may still be traces of food and fat. Pour hot water over them, and your dishes are now fit for the dishwater. Is this all a lot of labor and trouble? Undoubtedly. But it works, it uses a minimum of water and energy, it's good for keeping unoccupied children busy (as well as teaching them useful skills), and it doesn't require electricity if you have some way to procure and heat water. And once you're used to it, all this stuff that takes so long to write out becomes second nature. You don't think about it and obssess over how long it takes; you just do it.
  
  To wash dishes without running water, you need two dishpans, one to wash in and one to rinse in. Fill one with water as hot as you're willing to use (gloves help here), and add some liquid soap (you won't have liquid detergent any more, so all your scraps of soap get saved, and put in a jar to dissolve into hand and dish soap). Fill the other basin with hot water alone. Wash your glasses and cups first, and then the silverware (everything that touches the mouth, in other words). Dip each item into the rinse water, swish it around, and put it in the dish rack. Plates, bowls and saucers comes next, then pots and pans. If you're careful about scraping and rinsing, there will be very little food in the wash basin, and because you're using soap and not detergent (not much suds), there won't be much soap in the rinse water either.
  
  When you're finished, the wash water goes on whatever plants need a drink (the soap won't hurt them), and the rinse water becomes the wash water for the next washing-up. This may be a problem if you don't have any place to leave the basin (it's a problem for me now, with a tiny mobile home sink). I set the basin on the counter next to the sink, for want of a better place. I'm hoping to replace the whole sink cabinet with a large commercial double sink some time this year, but I've been hoping to do that for three years now and it hasn't happened yet. At any rate, when you're ready to do the next load of dishes, add enough very hot water to the basin to bring it up to a suitable temperature, and more soap. The basin you washed in for the previous meal now holds the rinse water.
  
  After the dishes are finished, use the still soapy dishcloth to wipe down the counters and the food preparation surfaces. Pour water over another clean rag and go back over the counters to remove soap traces, and if you're really paranoid about germs, go back over them with vinegar (kills more germs than bleach, and doesn't take the skin off your hands, or the mucous membranes off your toddler's esophagus).
  
  If you're lucky enough to have a cast iron cookstove, then also wipe off the stove surfaces with a damp cloth (the heat from the stove will evaporate any moisture left behind).
  
  Speaking of cast iron (get it now while it's still available), your cast iron frying pans and pots will often not need to be actually washed. I use a slotted spoon or spatula to remove any loose pieces of food remaining in the pan. If the pan has oil or fat in it, I heat it enough to melt the fat (or make the oil easier to pour) and pour it through a strainer into a jar for re-use. The dog, cat, chickens, etc. will appreciate the leftover fried bits, and when the fats are no longer appropriate to fry with, they can be used for soap. If the frying pan or pot still has some stuck-on food, pour some very hot water into it and let it soak until the food loosens and can be wiped off. You can also scrub the pan with your soapy dishcloth. Small amounts of soap won't hurt it. What you don't want to do is scour it with any kind of metal. This will scrape off the thin top layer of seasoned metal, and you'll have to season it all over again. As a last resort, you can scour it with a handful of salt or with a paste of baking soda and water, but I've seldom found that to be necessary. Once it's clean, gently wipe off any remaining water and put the pot back on the stove to finish drying. I use a handtowel to wipe off cast iron, the one that I'm going to toss in the laundry when I'm finished, because even a thoroughly clean cast iron pot or pan may leave a faint smear of black on whatever you wipe it with. It's less likely to show on a colored or patterned terrycloth hand towel than on your good white cotton dish towels.
  
  The kitchen floor gets swept (anyone with a good corn broom is going to be the envy of the neighbors), and perhaps mopped. I'm a big fan of rag mops, because even if the day comes that you can't buy replacement mop heads, you can use the metal frame with whatever rags you have at hand (um, this is why they're called rag mops). But it isn't necessarily a requirement to do this every day. That depends on how many people are trucking in and out, what the weather is like, how dusty an area you live in, etc., etc. If you don't allow shoes in the house, your floors will stay cleaner.
  
  I'd love to have one of those cool buckets with a wringer on the side, like the ones used in commercial cleaning. Unfortunately, I have no place to put one, so for the moment, I wring the mop out by hand. When the toilet and tub come out of the now unused front bathroom (unused for a bathroom, at any rate--it has become the laundry), I might try to find space for a real mop bucket. But they're not essential, just handy. On the days that I mop the floor, I use the rinse water from washing the dishes. I dump it into a bucket, add enough more warm water to cover the mop, and away we go. There will be a small amount of soap in the rinse water by the time you've finished the dishes, enough to help clean the floor but not so much that it leaves a lot of residue on the floor. If you can't stand even that much, you can dump the used water (on the roses, not down the drain), rinse out the mop, refill the bucket with clean water, and go over the floor again. I'm too lazy to do that, sorry.
  

This is dragging out into a longer post than I intended, so it will have to be continued later. Laundry beckons.

Labels: cleaning, dishwashing, non-electric

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RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002