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This page is still under construction, and may be incomplete.
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Cleaning and sanitation cover a large range of problems and solutions. How do you wash dishes and clothing? How do you wash yourself? What about toilets? How do you deal with infants and children, or the elderly or disabled? What about sickroom sanitation? When I first began thinking about preparedness, my emphasis was solely on food storage. But when I told a friend that I was stocking up, she said, "I don't see any point in doing that. If the power came back on, there would be food in the grocery stores, and if it didn't come back on right away, you'd have to go to a shelter and you couldn't take the food with you anyway. And besides, without power you couldn't cook or wash dishes, or anything." It had never occurred to me that many people wouldn't have any idea how to manage ordinary cleaning tasks without electricity. Now that my eyes have been opened, I've spent a lot of time working on the subject. To make it easier to read and navigate, I've broken this topic down into sections, Materials and Equipment, Methods, and Special Situations. One caution first: the answer to keeping yourself, your family and your home clean in a disaster scenario is not to buy huge quantities of expensive anti-bacterial commercial preparations. To begin with, their primary purpose is to separate you from your money, and secondarily, to persuade you to buy one manufacturer's product over another. If you don't believe that, just walk down the aisle in any supermarket and look at the competing claims on the containers. We've been brainwashed to believe that we can't have a clean home without heavily processed (and often toxic) products, and that the only decision we need to make is which ones to buy. Throw that thinking out. And then look through your cupboards and bathrooms and throw out the products themselves, because the risk of keeping them on hand is greater than any benefit you'll get from them. This is one disaster preparation plan you can put into use immediately. Materials--You only need five items. That surprises most people, but it's true. You need vinegar, baking soda, borax, plain soap (not any kind of "beauty bar") and washing soda. It doesn't hurt to have a bottle or two of ammonia and perhaps a couple of jugs of unscented bleach on hand for the few occasions when they might be helpful (as long as you understand the important precautions about their use and the fact that THEY MUST NEVER BE COMBINED--the combination produces a poisonous gas that will kill you very fast!). | |||
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Can you really clean everything with just those five components? Yes, you certainly can. Let's look at the most common cleaning chores. Dishes I use a homemade concoction of grated soap and water for dishes. Most people just store a supply of their favorite liquid detergent in the largest jugs they can find. Having commercial detergent on hand is fine for short-term emergencies (it's not so good for your septic tank nor the groundwater your septic system leaches into, nor for municipal water treatment systems, but I realize not everyone is willing to give up their favorite brand). Here is my recipe (adapted from one I found at How to Do Things).
1 gallon of tap water 2 tablespoons of glycerin (not required, but it does give a thicker consistency) 1/2 cup of white vinegar (to help cut grease) A few drops of essential oils, if you prefer a scented soap Combine the grated soap and water in a large pan (most recipes say not to use aluminum, and that's always a good policy, but this recipe doesn't contain anything caustic, and the vinegar won't be in the pan long enough for the acid to cause a problem). Heat the mixture over low heat until the grated soap is completely dissolved. Add the vinegar, glycerine and the essential oil(s), and mix thoroughly. Pour into squeeze bottles or other containers. Shake well before each use. This will not produce a lot of bubbles, but the bubbles are not what get the dishes clean. The pictures below show each step (I was out of glycerine when I made this batch, so it isn't shown). | |||
 Grate the soap into a bowl |
 Heat on low (note large spoon for stirring) |
 Add 1/2 cup white vinegar |
 Add several drops of essential oil, if desired |
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Why would you want to make dish soap instead of buying it (other than concerns for groundwater, etc.)? One reason is simply that it's less expensive. With a commercial product, you're not only paying for all the extra ingredients and manufacturing steps (and advertising) that go into it, but you're also paying for the water it contains. Making it yourself saves money, and equally important, it saves storage space. Second, it's fun to make it, and it's a good teaching occasion for children. Third, you have the satisfaction of knowing that if the store shelves are bare, you can still make dish soap (both plain soap and vinegar are items you can make at home, though they're beyond the scope of this particular page). Why not just wash the dishes with plain soap? You certainly can do that. Just rub a bar of soap on your dishcloth or sponge and have at it. I like to use the liquid because the addition of vinegar does a better job on greasy pans. Speaking of vinegar, you can soak a cloth in vinegar and wipe the inside and outside of cloudy glassware to get rid of water deposits. Rinse the glasses well before using them again, of course! Remove those same white deposits from tea and coffee pots by letting vinegar sit overnight in them. A paste of vinegar and salt will clean brass and copper pots, and a paste of baking soda and water will clean greasy cast iron and enameled pots. It won't scratch the enamal, and it will remove baked or fried-on deposits from your cast iron without damaging the seasoning. You can also soak your stainless steel (but not aluminum) coffee pot in a solution of 3 tablespoons baking soda to one quart of water. Now that you have your dish soap, you may be wondering how to use it if there is no running water, and no electricity or gas to power your hot water heater. Rather than make this page any larger than it is, I posted those instructions on the Skills page. Laundry I use a similar recipe for laundry soap, with the addition of washing soda and borax. Note that the laundry soap actually has a lower percentage of soap in it. That's partly because the washing soda and borax contribute to the cleaning action, so you don't need as much. It's also because there is likely to be much more grease in a load of dishes than in a load of clothing.
1/2 cup washing soda 1/2 cup borax  Step 1 - Grate your soap into a bowl or pan. I grate it right into the pan where it will be dissolved in water. You can use a smaller pot than you need for the dish soap, because only part of the water is added now. The rest of it will be added after you pour the soap into the storage container or bucket. For this batch, I used Fels Naptha.
Use the large holes on the grater, for both the laundry and the dish soap. It isn't necessary to make soap powder, just to get small enough shreds that they will dissolve in a reasonable amount of time when you heat them.  Step 2 - Add six cups of water, and heat until the grated soap is completely dissolved. The next step will be to add washing soda and borax, but you can still see bits of floating soap shreds in this picture, so it is not sufficiently dissolved.
 Step 3 - Stir in the borax and washing soda, and mix thoroughly. You should have a thickened, gel-like liquid (but don't worry if it doesn't gel as long as you used the right amount of each ingredient).
 Step 4 - Put a quart of hot water (not boiling, just hot tap water) in your storage container or bucket. Add the soap and stir well. Now fill the bucket to the top with warm water, stir again, and you're done! One note--this assumes that you're using a two-gallon bucket. If not, it would be a good idea to put two gallons of water in your container before adding the other ingredients and make a mark at the top of the water level (pour the water out again afterward, of course). You want the total volume to be two gallons.
I've seen some directions that call for letting the mixture stand overnight, or even for 24 hours, so it will gel. Mine has always gelled as soon as I added the borax and washing soda. If you live in a soft water area or have a water softener, your laundry soap may not gel. Doesn't matter--it works just as well. It's a good idea to stir this up before you use it each time, so the percentage of soap and water will be the same for each load of laundry. I keep an old paint stirring stick on top of the bucket, along with the old measuring cup I use to dip it out with. I use 1/2 cup for a normally soiled load of laundry (in a top loading machine), and a whole cup for a more heavily soiled load like jeans and overalls. This is another of those dual-use preparedness items. Use it now, because it saves money and it's better for the environment, and then you'll also know how to make it if you can't buy commercial detergent later. If you have no idea how to do laundry by hand, check out the Skills page. Cleaning the bathroom
Vinegar Tips The New Homemaker Cleaning with Vinegar at About.com Personal Hygiene This is a difficult area for a lot of people, who automatically assume that none of the conveniences they're used to will be available. No flush toilets, no hot running water, no showers, no shampoo or conditioner or moisturizer, no shaving cream or aftershave, no deodorant or toothpaste. How ever did our ancestors make themselves presentable! I think we'll have to accept one inevitable fact, that the odor of honest sweat is going to be more prevalent in emergency conditions than it is now, and we may have to just screw up our noses and deal with the odor of unwashed bodies sometimes too. But in a long-term self-sufficiency scenario, it isn't necessary to be either stinky or poorly groomed. Let's deal with these one at a time. One of the major issues for any population without municipal water and sewage is human waste. It's been managed more or less ineffectively in most places with various kinds of outhouses, slop pots, trench latrines and simply going behind the nearest bush. We don't want to do any of those, although knowing how to properly do your business in the outdoors is an invaluable skill. In fact, there is a book called How to Shit in the Woods  , that I can recommend. But most of us will be looking at how to replace a flush toilet, or at least how to jury-rig a temporary alternate toilet.
My preference, and my recommendation, would be to replace your existing toilets with sawdust toilets. Joe Jenkins has extensive instructions on his website for building the $25 (or less) Hinged-Top Humanure Toilet, as well as information on composting human waste safely. I wish I could say I have done that here. It's one of the few steps we have yet to take, primarily because the other person in the household flatly refuses to use one. But I'm planning to build one anyway, so that if we need it, we'll already have it on hand. When I do that, I'll post pictures of the building process here. In the meantime, when the power is out, we flush the toilet with rainwater from one of the six barrels under the downspouts. That's an acceptable temporary solution for homes with a working septic system. It might not be possible if your municipal sewage treatment plant is flooded or otherwise out of service. One way to put together a temporary toilet in a hurry, or to add one if the household expands, is to use a special toilet seat meant to fit on a 5-gallon bucket (and it will also fit the larger ale pails as well). These are available from several suppliers, but the one I bought came from USA Emergency Supply. Yes, I've tried it. I'm fairly tall, so I found a six-gallon ale pail easier to sit on. The advantage of a permanent boxed-in toilet is that 1) you can use a standard toilet seat from the hardware store, and 2) the weight of the person is supported by the enclosure, not by the bucket. And of course, it's much less likely to tip over in use, which might be a factor if your household includes rambunctious youngsters or unsteady elders. What about washing yourself, your children, your hair, etc, without hot running water? Easier than you might think. A small child can be stood in a sink or tub, to have warm water poured over him or her. Small children particularly like doing this outside, as many parents have found out the hard way ("Do you know your little girl is standing under the hose without any clothes on?!!") For older children and adults, a 3-gallon agricultural sprayer works very well (obviously not one that has had chemicals in it, however! Reserve it for showering). Since we don't have hot running water here, that is what we use. Fill it to the marked water line with your preferred water temperature, push the pump on the top three or four times to build up pressure in the tank, and shower away. You'll have to pump it once more, at least, but usually not more than that. Three gallons is plenty for an enjoyable shower. You could connect the tank to an existing shower head, but I didn't want to disturb the piping here, and the spray head that comes with the tank works just fine. If you have a working septic system (and for as long as it works), you can take your shower in an existing tub or shower enclosure. If that isn't an option, a child's swimming pool in the middle of a water-safe floor (kitchen, for example) might be used. Removing the water from the pool could be an issue (consider a marine bilge pump with a hose on the end leading outdoors). Or rig up a curtained enclosure on a back porch for warm weather use. Camping and outdoor supply companies sell such enclosures if you don't think you can make one yourself, as well as "solar showers." These are heavy plastic bags holding a couple of gallons of water that can be hung up above the bather. I've avoided buying one of these because of the weight of the water, and reports from others who have used them that they're fine for occasional use on a camping or backpacking trip, but don't last very long if used every day. How will you wash your hair (besides stocking up on large amounts of commercial shampoo)? It turns out that one of the best cleaning products for your kitchen is also one of the best for your hair--baking soda. A paste of baking soda in warm water can be poured over your hair while you stand in the shower or lean over a sink or tub. Rub it into your hair and scalp, rinse thoroughly, and you'll be amazed at how soft and shiny your hair is. The exact ratio of water to baking soda isn't terribly important. I like it to be thick enough that it doesn't immediately run off down the drain, but not so thick that it's hard to distribute. If you need conditioner or rinse, a tablespoon of white or cider vinegar in a cup of water (double or triple the amounts, if you have long hair) works well. If you have access to lemon juice, you might prefer that to the vinegar. Those of us in temperate climates are going to be hoarding our lemon juice for culinary purposes, since we can't grow lemons here. The odor of vinegar dissipates very fast--you won't smell like pickles. Deodorant? The best solution I know, besides frequent bathing, is a "deodorant stone." It's a particular kind of crystal (potassium sulfate and other minerals) that is moistened with water and then applied to the usual areas. It is non-irritating (Walter Reed Army Hospital reportedly gives these to their patients), contains no aluminum, and as far as I can see, lasts just about forever. Any natural foods store should sell these, and of course they're available online as well. Don't be lured by fancy packaging and high prices. A plain stone with a price sticker plastered on it will work just as well as one in a fancy box or silk bag. Use it on your wet skin after you step out of the shower, or moisten it with water to apply to dry skin. With a hundred different kinds of moisturizers and similar skin products in widespread use now, it's hard to envision a time when women didn't slather these all over themselves. Yet that time is relatively recent. When I was small, there was hand lotion (unless you could afford the really high-end luxurious beauty products). If some other part of your body was dry and needed moisturizing, you put hand lotion on it too. Hand lotion still works just fine for that purpose, in fact. And you can make hand lotion that is not only far less expensive than the purchased version, but far less toxic as well. Hand lotion toxic? But you use organic beauty products, right? Unfortunately, most people don't realize that there are no standards (in the United States, at least) for using the term "organic" on non-food products, and that the FDA does not require manufacturers (of any skin care product, organic or otherwise) to test for safety. If you want to know what's in your beauty products, check out the Environmental Working Group's Cosmetic Database. You may be surprised to learn what your favorite product could be doing to your health. So let's look at making hand lotion. Like mayonnaise, hand lotion is an "emulsion," a combination of oils and water-based liquids that is so well mixed that the oils stay in suspension in the liquids. Mayonnaise uses eggs as a binder. Hand lotion uses beeswax. To make a 10-oz jar of hand lotion, you need a cup of oil, an ounce of beeswax (available in pretty much any natural foods store), and a few ounces of water. I have used jojoba oil, a combination of jojoba and olive oil, and almond oil. The almond oil will give the lightest lotion, but the combination of jojoba and olive oil rubs into your skin nicely, even though it's heavier, and might be a better mixture for cold weather and badly chapped skin. You can add a couple of capsules of natural vitamin E or a few drops of tea tree oil as a preservative (the tea tree oil has a distinctive medicinal odor that some people won't want to put on their hands). A couple of precautions: first, wax will vaporize at high temperatures, and will flash into a nasty fire if the vapor contacts any source of flame. Wax fires are bad, and you don't want to have one in your kitchen. So keep the heat low and stay with it until you take the pan off the stove. Second, if you're lucky enough to have a glass (Pyrex) saucepan, you can mix the lotion in the same pan in which you heat the wax and oil, using a stick blender. The glass pans have a rounded inside edge on the bottom, so it's easy to use a scraper to keep the solution down on the bottom of the pan (not easy in a straight-sided metal pan). You can also pour the solution into a regular blender to mix it, but you will use a lot of hot water, soap and time to get that blender clean afterward. I use the same stick blender that I use to make soap, in a Pyrex mixing bowl, and it works very well.  For this batch, I used almond oil. It's a high quality, light, odorless oil that makes a great base oil for all kinds of body products. If you can grow sunflowers, it's possible to press the seeds to obtain oil for cooking, soap and lotions. It's too high in omega-6 to be your sole source of oil for consumption, but it's great for body products. Btw, oilseed sunflower seed (the Peredovik variety) is available from Southern Exosure Seed Exchange, and instructions for building an oil press can be found at Journey To Forever.
 It's likely that your source for beeswax will sell it in one-ounce chunks already, so it doesn't need to be weighed. If not, any kitchen or postal scale will work.
 Heat one cup of oil and one ounce of beeswax in a small pan, until the wax dissolves into the oil. After the wax is completely melted, let the mixture cool for a bit, not very long. The wax is a solid at room temperature, and if you leave it long enough, it will turn back to that solid and you'll have to heat it again. You want to let it cool just long enough that if you get splattered slightly when you begin mixing it, you won't be burned.
 Pour the mixture into a bowl and start your stick blender on low (or pour into your regular cup blender). Slowly add six tablespoonsful of water. The easiest way to add the water is to put the entire amount into a glass or a measuring cup, so you don't have to measure each spoonful as you go. The mixture will emulsify very fast. If you want to add vitamin E or a few drops of an essential oil, put them in the water so they are mixed in thoroughly. I don't have three hands, and there's no one else handy to take pictures, so I can't show you adding the water and mixing it in the same photo. Just add it slowly.
If you're mixing in a bowl, the lotion will start to thicken faster around the edges of the bowl than it does in the middle, because the bowl is cooler than the lotion. Just use your scraper to mix it all in together. The thickened part will get mixed back in by the blender.  Spoon the finished lotion into containers, and it's ready to use. This picture shows a standard industry container, similar to what you might find in a store. You don't have to buy those, but you can often find them in health food stores. My first batch went into a jar that had held a fancy brand of mustard. It's still there, in fact, with the handwritten notation on the top that this is "Lotion! Not Edible!" (it looks more like mayonnaise than anything else, hence the warning). One advantage of putting your lotion in standard cosmetic containers is that no one is likely to taste it.
One great thing about this lotion is that you need only a tiny bit of it at a time. I made my first batch almost four months ago, and you can hardly tell it's been used. It's really more of a cream (though you can make it thinner by using less wax). Want a body butter? Just keep it in the refrigerator. What if there's no power and you can't use a mixer? It is possible to emulsify an oil/water solution with a fork or whisk. I haven't tried it with lotion but I often make mayonnaise that way. It takes longer and you need strong wrists and arms, but it can be done. How do you think people made lotion before electric blenders and hand mixers? If you do this by hand, add the water even more slowly, just a few drops at a time. Because you can't stir the mixture as fast as a blender or hand mixer, you need to give each addition of water a bit longer to get thoroughly mixed in before adding more. A manual egg beater would probably also work, though I've found it less efficient than a whisk for mayonnaise. If you have money to spend, you can get a hand cranked blender, but a fork or a whisk work just fine. The original directions for this came from the LearningHerbs.com website. You'll find additional information and suggestions there for different combinations of base oils and scents. | |||
