How to Do Laundry Off Grid: Washing Clothes Without Electricity

Nobody thinks about laundry until the power goes out and there’s a pile of it sitting there. Washing clothes by hand isn’t difficult once you know what you’re doing. It’s just slower and a lot more physical. These tips will help you work smarter, whether you’re dealing with a power outage or just want to be less dependent on the grid for everyday tasks.

Why You Need to Know How to do Laundry Off-Grid

Laundry is one of the most arduous of all household tasks. First, there’s the scrubbing and scrubbing, usually against a washboard or something similar, with the hope that the combination of friction, water, and soap will remove stains. Then, there’s the rinsing by hand, wringing by hand, and then hanging everything up to dry.

In a power outage that last long enough, this is your future! And, possibly, you’re among the many people who want to become more self-reliant and less reliant on the power grid. Either way, I’ve put together every make-it-easier pro hack I can find to help you with this laborious task.

17 Tips for Cleaning Laundry Without Electricity

1. Maintain good hygiene. You might be saying to yourself, doing laundry is gonna be the last thing on my mind in an emergency. Perhaps. At least in the beginning. However, if you manage to survive a disaster, do you want poor hygiene to sicken or even kill you or your loved ones? I think not. It could end up being a super long power outage that has you seeking alternative methods to wash clothes. And everyone in the family will eventually need clean underwear, right?
2. Do your best to keep up on laundry. When an emergency happens, you will feel some sense of assurance that most of your family has clean underwear. In fact, hurricane-hardened moms know to go on a laundry-cleaning marathon once a hurricane is just 3 or 4 days out. If the power goes down, at the very least you’ll have clean sheets, towels, clothes, and plenty of clean underwear!
3. Keep loads small. It’s better to have one small load to do per day than a massive pile of laundry that takes up an entire day to finish.
4. Assign a laundry day to each person in the home. If they are old enough to, have them be responsible for their own laundry, this includes their linens. Teach and help younger children how to do laundry, including sorting, which detergent to use, how to remove stains, how to fold each type of item, and finally, where everything goes once folded. When they are 12 years old they should have this mastered. It’s a life skill.
5. Stock up on laundry soap, dryer sheets, fabric softener and stain remover. A three month supply would be awesome! Aldi usually has low prices on laundry soap.
6. We have stored bars of Fels-Naptha and Zote soap. These bars can serve as a pre-treatment stain remover and as detergent. They are inexpensive, small, easy to store, and last a long time.
7. As a bonus, Fels-Naptha can be used for poison ivy treatment, cleaning very greasy/dirty hands, and household cleaning. Do not wash dishes with it or use it as a regular hand soap.
8. Zote is a great soap for those with sensitive skin or for laundering baby clothes and cloth diapers. It has a strong scent, however, so I often use Dr. Bronner soaps instead.
9. Let laundry soak. Pre-soaking heavily soiled items helps to loosen dirt and grime. Work smarter, not harder.
10. Brush or shake off dirt and debris. Common sense here. If you can keep it out of your wash water to begin with your water will last that much longer.
11. Rinse with vinegar. Use white vinegar in the rinse water to soften clothes and other laundry items and to remove soap residue.
12. Wear an apron. Wear an apron while cooking and doing messy tasks. It sounds old-fashioned but it genuinely reduces how often clothes need washing, which matters a lot when laundry is labor-intensive.
13. Clotheslines and clothespins are a must. Clotheslines come in a variety of styles. Buy what works best for your home and size of your family. Be prepared to have a drying method for inside your home on rainy and/or wintery days. Wet clothes have been known to freeze solid on a clothesline!
14. Have a backup location to wash and dry. In some areas the weather is wonderfully cooperative! Other places, not so much. Consider the bathroom a great place to wash. You will need to drain the water somewhere and hanging a laundry line over the bathtub works perfectly. Another location might be a garage or basement for hanging clothes to dry.
15. Once in a while, wash clothes by hand or just bypass the dryer. There is much to learn about the art of hanging clothes on a line. More people than you might think continue to use a washboard for scrubbing clothes by hand. This is an urban off grid living skill to know.
16. In a true grid-down scenario or a severe drought, be prepared to recycle your grey water. Grey water is the water that you used to do laundry and can be used to water plants, flush toilets, wash a vehicle, or other uses that don’t involve contact with food. If you’re planning to do this, use water that has not been used to wash underwear, since any water that comes in contact with feces will be too contaminated to re-use. The solution for that is simple: schedule one or more loads of “underwear laundry” per week and wash everything else separately.
17. Consider buying a non-electric washing machine as a backup for power outages. These units run around $70, and one brand to look for is the WonderWash. Some of these units have a foot pedal or a hand held crank and hold about 6 lbs. of clothes. They require less physical strength and it only takes a few minutes of turning to have clean clothes. Rinsing goes fast and the clothes can be spun to expel much of the water.

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The Final Word

Doing laundry without electricity is one of those skills that sounds harder than it is once you’ve actually done it. The first time takes longer than expected. The second time is easier. If you have kids old enough to help, get them involved. Wringing out clothes and hanging a clothesline are skills they can actually manage, and that extra help is going to be needed. Keep your supplies stocked, know where your clothesline is, and you’ll handle this one just fine.

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