Selfsufficientish.com

Hello,

I am moving to Italy in a few months time and will be having an outside stone sink to do all my washing in. I don't think I will have any problems getting clothes dry in the summer but not sure about winter...

Does anyone else do all their clothes washing by hand? Do you have a spin dryer or just deal with it in the winter?? I would rather not get a spin dryer as I would like to use as little electricity as possible..

Thanks!

Fiona

We washed by hand for 9 years in our previous home because there was no room for a washing machine but we did use a spin dryer - no garden, so there was nowhere to hang things out to dry, we couldn't have managed without it.

I used to wash everything by hand when i was back in IRELAND many moons ago. If you have a bathtub rather than a shower it is easy to rig a pully system for clothes drying. 2 large hooks in the ceiling (one at each end of the tub) some pvc pipe or wooden dowels the length of the tub, we had 5 and fitted them through a piece of wood at each end (make slots in the wood to accomodate the long pipes, them all you need is some clothesline rope from the hardware store to tie it all together through the pulleys then you can lower it to put the clothes on and raise it up out of the way for drying and the clothes drip into the tub. hope this helps. P.S. nothing beats a good washboard for scrubing the clothes on, you can find them on ebay.

Thank you both. The sink is stone and has a washboard built in..

My bathroom is only 1.5 m by 2 m so definitely not going to be a bath tub..although I could hang clothes on the porch until they have stopped dripping and then hang them by the wood burner?

Or look into getting a spin dryer...I tried to find a manual one but they seem to be tiny (for caravans and things..)


edited to add..

Spitfire..just noticed you are in Sacramento...I spent 3 months helping to build a straw bale house near Sacramento last year.. (about an hour from Red Bluff)

small world and funny that you have already build a strawbale house as we have 2.5 acres in klamath fall Oregon that we plan to live on when we retire I have been reading books re:straw bale building and we are giving it some serious thought. is it expensive? we want to build as green and as cheap as possible, I would love it if you could give me some pointers

I only arrived to help after the main bales were up...my job was lots and lots and lots of earthen plastering! Spent most days making plaster by hand and then applying it. I would love a straw bale house, very cool in summer..warm in winter...but they are extremely labour intensive so would take me forever to do on my own.

My friends house is pretty huge (I think) so not sure how much that cost but he had also built a smaller straw bale building, that would be big enough for one person to live in and cost about $10.000 including the roof etc.

Here is his blog if you are interested..

http://pasodellama.blogspot.com/search? ... results=12

Could you find a mangle?

That's a good idea, I would like to try and find one..not sure if they have them in Italy..

Even in the depths of Winter, are there not dry days where you are going to live? Try to work out when you could hang stuff on the line, then wash the day before. It takes a bit more planning, but would get your stuff to a reasonable 'just needs airing' state.

An other tip: plan what you are going to wear for a few days at a time, then you can ensure they are all the same colour to save lots of little loads.

We found a hand cranked 'rumble tumble' washer & it's brilliant!

http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/acata ... hine_.html

MW

Hi MW,

I like the look of that little washing machine, how wet are the clothes when they come out?

Thanks

Fiona

Soaking, but I have a little mangle.

I can do about three loads before the water needs topping up, by putting the mangled water back in.

MW

Had to in our first few years together -

woven items - wring item by hand, put middle of wrung item around the back of the tap (so long as it's firmly fixed) and twist it more - gets lots more water out. If you do have a bath-tub then treading the wash (like grapes) gives your arms a rest, pure cotton sheets get very heavy when full of water, and without a mangle or spinner they make the load a real chore.

Organise to wash large items when the weather will be dry

It has been many years since I washed all my gear by hand.

I would go through phases of it whilst at sea - there is always a Chinese laundy on a RN ships. Every time they stuck their prices up, lots of folk would go back to hand washing in the sinks. There was a spinner, but 99% of the time it was broken. The only reliable method was to fold things in half lengthways and hook them over the tap and twist like h£ll!

The difficult part was finding somewhere to hang your gear up to dry on a warship, but everyone had their own wee hidden place. It's not like we could hoist our washing up a yardarm.....

Thurston Garden wrote:...
It's not like we could hoist our washing up a yardarm.....

whyever not - mind you would be a bit pointless if you were in the boats

Well we were allowed to do it on the Queen's birthday