Dishwashing tips please-

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O'K. I'm going to go for it and write a Countryside article! I will confess that I have another motive as well as those I gave before. My son is having trouble with writing essays in school, and I got on my soapbox and was going on and on about how important writing was in school, not knowing the sneaky child had overheard my conversation with my sister-(she was here at the holidays) about writing for Countryside. To make a long story short-he said he would write an extra credit essay if I wrote the Countryside article-So .....

I think it is good to concentrate on one subject-so my subject is-Dishwashing without running water. I'm not even going to touch that dishwasher debate, my premise is that for some reason,(weather, remodeling, moving, whatever)suddenly you have no running water. How will you do your dishes? (assuming we are thrifty and enviromentaly conscience homemakers and don't go through a bunch of paper plates) I've done this a number of times. I would love to hear any tips, suggestions. comments etc. Thanks.

If this turns out well, I'll do one on laundry next.

-- Kelly (homearts2002@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002

Answers

Good luck Kelly! I'll be looking for the article in CS. When we first moved here (we moved in before the house was finished) I did not have running water. We did however have a cistern. I just got water out of the cistern with a bucket, heated some and poured into two plastic dish pans and washed and rinsed away! It really was no problem at all. Sure did make me appreciate my dishwasher though! But to be truthful, if I had to do that again, it wouldn't bother me.

-- Barb in Ky. (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

Kelly, that sure is gonna be a short article. I wash dishes without running water all the time! I have no indoor plumbing. I pump about two or so gallons into my 3-gallon pot. Heat it on the woodstove or campstove. Then pour the hot water into two plastic dish pans. One pan is for washing the other for rinsing. That's it, sure isn't rocket science. I do this once a day. --Happy trails, CF P.S. I throw the dirty dish water out off the porch.

-- Cabin Fever (cabinfever_mn@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

Barb, I did exactly what you did the first 6 months I lived here. Sometimes I kind of miss it!!! I would use the water on my flowers outside.

Another thing to remember, if your water goes off for some reason, There are probably 40-50 gallons in your hot water heater. You can use the drain at the bottom to get out a few gallons, BUT make sure you turn the power off, to the hot water heater first!! You don't want to ruin it. We have 2 hot water heaters, so I know we always have about 100 gallons of water in these tanks.

Yeserday the line coming from our hot water heater sprung a leak. I called Cale at work and asked him to stop and pick up some plumbing supplies so it could be fixed. He worked late, and didn;t get home until 7 pm. Then he cut the line at the leak and went to put the splice in where it was leaking. However when he twisted it, he broke it off at the tank. This was completely rusted down into the tank. since the tank is about 20 years old, we just decided to buy a new one. So at 8 pm we headed to Lowe's, found all the plumbing stuff we needed (half of which they were out of!!!) then bought a new, energy efficient heater, and got home about 9:30. We took out the old one, hooked up the new one and didn't get to bed until 11pm (late for us) But we have lots of hot water now!

So these kinds of things can happen to anyone, and if we weren't able to get it fixed so quickly, I'm sure many of these tips would be useful, not only to us but to lots of people.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 15, 2002.


The best thing is to scrape as much food as you can off the dishes first with a paper knapkin/paper towel or newspaper. The girl scout way is to use three pans. First is hot soapy water. Second is hot rinse water and third is cold water with bleach. They are placed in a nylon mesh bag and hung from a tree. That's all I know about washin without running water from doing while camping.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

Friends of ours only heat the hot water tank on bath days. For washing up, they heat water on the stove.

When I was little, we camped for four weeks in my Uncle Joe's log cabin (a real, original pioneer cabin) without any plumbing at all. Washing water came from the creek (our outdoor "bathtub") and was boiled for drinking. We learned the benefits of using a little sand on the dishrag for scrubbing pots. Now when we take the children camping, I put a little sand in a tin cup for dipping the dishrag into. Some people say that if you use hot enough water and sand for the sticky stuff, you don't need soap at all. The water was spread on the ground when we were finished, but if I did dishes this way all the time, I would use the water on the garden.

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), January 15, 2002.



Hey, right up my alley! We did this for almost a year. Do the dishes just as cabin fever said. We'd fill up the jugs when over at someone's house for a visit. For laundry, that bathtub came in handy until I found my hand operated washer at an antique shop. I think the laundry was actually cleaner doing it by hand, though.

-- Dawn (olsoncln@ecenet.com), January 15, 2002.

Kelly- if Cabin Fever Turns out to be correct about the length of your article, you might broaden your the topic to ways to conserve hot water use.

We set up a non-running water sink during the drought of the summer of 2000, which is now located at our homestead in West Virginia.

We drove 60 miles both ways to pick up a free 2 compartmant Stainless Steel sink, complete with a garbage disposal (gave it away), and Moen faucet, (stored it for our current home which has plumbing). He also gave me a shop vac with a switch that worked most of the time on the first try. One mans ceiling is another man's floor.

Anyway we set it up on a discarded propane grill base, with two 5 gallon buckets on the rack underneath for drainage. We put water heated on the cookstove in a 2 gallon insulated dispenser. A couple of dish pans and there you have it, clean dishes and no running water.

This water is now available to water plants and shrubs. The waste water system is spared several gallons of water to reclaim, and therefore less chlorine and other chemicals were released into the environment.

-- Rick (Rick_122@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.


Kelly, I don't have much advice to offer, but I'll sure be looking for the article, and good luck!

-- Christine in OK (cljford@mmcable.com), January 16, 2002.

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