Wash Day At The Creek

Winter has barely gotten started good, but I already began dreaming of summer while doing the laundry today. Washing clothes is never my favorite chore, but during the summer it’s much more fun, at least for the boys. People often ask me how we wash clothes in the bush with no electricity or running water. Well, in a way, we do have running water --- the creek runs all summer, and all we have to do is run down there.

All of us haul clothes, plastic totes, soap, a pitcher and my handy, dandy “Rapid Washer” down the hill to the creek behind our cabin. Then we just make a day of it. We fill the totes with creek water, add a little laundry soap and clothes, and then I let the boys have at it ---  until they lose interest. There’s nothing Zeke would rather do than play in water, so he’s as handy as my Rapid Washer on wash day! 

The boys helping wash clothes at the creek last summer.

Here’s a picture of my “Rapid Washer”. It sort of looks like a metal plunger. Does a pretty fair job of cleaning clothes, as long as a steady supply of elbow grease is available.

"Rapid Washer" - It's sort of like a plunger
only it's metal. It's great for washing
clothes by hand.

To rinse clothes, I put a plastic basket in the deepest part of the creek (all of about 6 inches, if I’m lucky). Then add a few clothes, swoosh ‘em around a little and let the creek do the rest. We hang the wet clothes on branches to drip for a few minutes, and then hang them on a rope strung between some trees in the yard. If it doesn’t rain, we have clean clothes to wear the next day . . . but it always rains when clothes are hanging on the line.

To rinse clothes, I put a few things in a
basket and then let the creek do the work.

Sure beats wash days during the winter. We have a little portable electric washer, and a drain pipe that goes through a hole in the floor. We have to run the generator for this, so it makes for a noisy day. While I wash clothes, Chuck uses the snow machine to haul water in 5-gallon buckets from the spring. Even little washers use LOTS of water. Then we have clothes hanging all over the cabin for a day or so. At least the washer has a spinner on one side. Before we adopted the boys, I used to wash clothes during the winter by hand in the cabin sort of like we do at the creek, only we had to haul the water up the hill to the cabin, and we didn’t have a snow machine back then. I can hardly wait until summer.