Going along with the idea that waste is a bad thing and saving money a good thing, Sister and I have been washing our clothes by hand for a number of months now. Or rather, I've been washing the clothes by hand and Sister has been more of a spectator. I suppose this is logical because I (surprisingly) and more of a homemaker and she does work 40 hours a week whereas I work 28. Moot point and I digress.
It hasn't been too hard to do and I find it rather soothing most days. We use a couple of 5-gallon buckets, one for wash the other for rinse, and nothing but my own two hands for the entire process. I usually soak the clothes for a bit before agitating them for about 5 minutes. Then I squeeze as much soapy water out of the clothes that I can, toss it into the rinse bucket and repeat. It only takes me about an hour to do all the laundry that has accumulated during the week. The clothes are then placed on a couple of drying racks and by the next day, the clothes are usually dry and ready to wear.
Yes, it does take a bit more work than just throwing it in the washer/dryer BUT I figure that I'm using roughly 1/3 of the water and absolutely nothing for electricity. I only wish that we could hang the clothes outside so that they would have that nice, outdoorsy smell. And this is much better than hauling the clothes down 3 flights of stairs, putting them in the car, driving to the laundromat, doing the clothes, putting them back in the car, hauling them BACK UP 3 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS and then putting them away. And there's the added bonus that this saves us $10.00 every week since laundromats are so freaking expensive.
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