Table of Contents
Soap Nuts (berries)
Making Your Own Laundry Soap
How to Make an off grid washing machine
How to Wash Clothes on a Washboard
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Soap Nuts (berries) Source unknown Shared by: Peggy Webb A friend and I were discussing emergency storage the other day and she said, “I need two whole shelves just for cleaning supplies!” We talked about simplifying her cleaning routine but she also wondered about laundry soap, fabric softener and stain treatment products.
I recommended she stick to baking soda, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide,... bleach and soap nuts for all her cleaning supplies, both now and for storage. Soap nuts (sometimes called soap berries) are a dried fruit from a tree which contain a large amount of saponin in their shells. When the shells come in contact with water, they release the saponin, turning the water into a great cleaning liquid. I use soap berries every day for laundry and have a large supply set aside in my emergency stores.
Soap nuts leave even hand washed clothing soft without fabric softener. The soap is gentle enough for delicates but tough enough for every day laundering. Diapers and stinky towels left too long between washes come out smelling fresh and clean. My youngest’s skin, which is very sensitive to the fragrances, colors and added chemicals in laundry detergent doesn’t react at all to soap nut soap.
To use, I put 12 soap nuts in a quart of hot water and steep. When it cools, I put a lid on it and store it in the fridge (soap nuts are actually fruit, so you’d refrigerate it like rehydrated raisins or other fruit.) The golden liquid is then available and ready for washing hair, dogs, cars, windows, countertops, laundry, just about anything that needs soap. After I strain the soapy liquid out of the jar to use, I fill the jar back up with water again. When the water is clear and no longer smells like soap nuts, I know it’s time to compost those 12 nuts and grab some more. My jar of nuts usually recharges 5 or 6 times.
The soapy water produced by soap nuts is antimicrobial, which helps break up gray water in a septic system. It kills germs on hands without strong chemicals like triclosan and on kitchen counters without bleach. You don’t need to worry about chemical spills or accidentally creating mustard gas in your garage if your soap nuts get loose.
So, instead of putting up bars of soap that have to be grated and added to other cleaning products, take a look at soap nuts for your emergency prep!
Peggy, Real Food Prepper
Making Your Own Laundry Soap  Making you own laundry soap is so easy and the savings for your family budget will amaze you. With you making your own laundry soap you also know exactly what is cleaning your families clothing. You don't have to worry about harsh chemicals. A Win/Win! 
 3. Add washing soda and borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use 1/2 cup per load. 
HOW TO MAKE AN OFF GRID WASHING MACHINEhttp://makeprojects.com/Project/Off-Grid-Laundry-Machine/268/1
A couple of years ago, I decided to concentrate my design research on devices that would be useful to poor families in developing countries — easy-to-make tools that address a specific need without disrupting the local economy, culture, or environment. Here’s one of my designs: a manual clothes washer that does a load of laundry in about 20 minutes using no power other than muscle. It’s portable, so you can carry or wheel it to a water source, and if you wash with biodegradable soap, the wash water can easily go to a garden afterward. They’re now using the washer in Hyanja, Nepal, where I collaborated on designing a localized version. It’s also a neat design if you’re living off the grid by choice in an industrialized area, or just conserving water and power. Inciting Agitation The washer consists of 3 main components: a container, a net bag, and a lever-driven shaft mechanism held in place by a simple wooden frame. The key component is the net bag, which is designed to hold, squeeze, and agitate the clothes. The middle of the net bag is a wide, open cylinder of flexible mesh netting. End-capping the cylinder above and below are semi-rigid cones made from short plastic pipes strung together with rope. Both cones point upward, so the bottom cone sticks up through the clothes and prevents them from balling together. While the washer is in operation, the top cone holds fast while the bottom cone is pulled up and down by the shaft, carrying the clothes with it. Each pump of the lever handle pulls the clothes up out of the water, squeezes them out between the nested cones, and releases them back down. The lever’s 40" length provides mechanical advantage for easy operation. These instructions show how to build a bare-bones device for less than $50 using materials from any home supply store. You can modify the design to suit available materials and your skill level. A machine of this size can handle only small loads up to 5lbs, but the ones we made in Nepal were larger, and I think that one could be made 2 or 3 times larger and would still be easy to operate. I also built a fancier, wooden version that’s towable, with wheels and a barrel-style container.
How To Wash Clothes On a Washboard
http://www.pioneerliving.net/washboard.htm
I am sure there are not a lot of us today who have ever washed clothes on a washboard like the pioneers did. Cleaning your clothes are just as important today as they were in the pioneer days. If we were suddenly thrown back in time, with no electricity or modern day washing machines how would we wash our clothes? This is an attempt to give a few simple instructions on how this could be achieved should the need arise. Reading instructions is probably not enough, like most things you will have to learn by doing. What you will need: 3 large wash tubs 1 large washboard 1 bar of laundry soap Hot and cold water Laundry basket Clothes pins and clothesline
1. Heat the water in one of the tubs over a hot fire. 2. Set the other two tubs up on blocks or a tree stump side by side 10-15 feet away from the fire. 3. Make certain all tubs are secure. 4. Fill one tub with boiling water, adding enough cold water to make it tolerable for your hands. 5. Add a few white clothes to the wash water 6. Put the washboard in the tub and rub the surface with a bar of soap. 7. Take a piece of laundry out of the water, lay it the length of and on top of the wash board. Rub soap on material. 8. With the edge of the material held in your hand between thumb and fingers, begin to rub up and down the board with the heel of your hand, gathering and pulling the material toward you. 9. Push the material down in the water and start from the beginning. 10. Scrub each garment vigorously four to eight times. 11. Dip into water, rinse, wring out water and put in next tub filled with warm rinse water. 12. Rinse in second water, wring dry, and hang on clothesline. Sound complicated? It really isn’t. After a sore back and a few blisters you will become an expert in no time. Tip: For best results, boil the clothes for about one hour stirring occasionally. This will loosen the soil and make scrubbing on the washboard much easier.
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