Handwashing 101/Handwashing Sucks

As mentioned in a previous post, we don’t have a washing machine. This means that we have to wash our clothes by HAND.

Handwashing 101

Step 1
Fill buckets with water and detergent and soak clothes anywhere from 20 minutes to overnight (we usually soak for a few hours).

Step 2
Remove clothes from bucket and fill three buckets with water. Add detergent to one bucket, and fabric softener to one bucket.

Step 3
Scrub clothes in the detergent water bucket, then rinse in plain water bucket, then soak in fabric softener bucket for a couple minutes, then ring water out. Repeat until all clothes have gone through this process.

Step 4
Hang clothes on laundry line outside and wait till they dry. (being mindful of if it will rain soon or not, it rains a lot in the Caribbean).



Now that you know how to successfully handwash your laundry here are the reasons why handwashing laundry sucks. 1) It takes forever. 2) It is really hard to get your white clothes clean. 3) It is really difficult to get stains out. 4) Ringing out the clothes by hand makes your hands raw and they really hurt. 5) We can’t even imagine how difficult washing and ringing out jeans will be, that’s why we haven’t done it yet. 6) You have to time things right so that your clothes don’t get wet from the rain. This happened to us and we had to re-ring out the clothes after the rain then wait for the rain to pass and hang them the next day to dry. 7) Your clothes get stretched out. 8) Drying clothes outside in the sun fades them.

Having said all that, we learned today that on top of your electricity bill they charge you 50% fuel surcharge. So if your bill is $100 they charge you $150. This means that handwashing will save us money on our electricity bill as we are doing all the labor and not a machine. So at least there is an upside ☺

Written by Kim