Tutorial on Wash Laundry by Hand

As many of you know I wash all of my laundry by hand. So I thought it might be fun to give you a quick tutorial on how it's done. 

***Please note that my husband, Brandy, was the one who taught me how to wash clothes by hand and though he's Honduran he is also a man so I could have been taught the wrong way;) 

You will need: A pila filled with water and a medium size plastic bowl 

(both pictured below),

5 gal buckets, dirty laundry and laundry soap: in both powdered and bar form (soaps pictured below)  

 

Step 1: Pour about 1/3 cup of powdered laundry soap into each 5 gal bucket you plan to use, then fill buckets 3/4 of the way up with water. Add dirty laundry and let it sit at least 15 min (DO NOT let it sit more then 16 hrs or you risk having it all go rancid. Trust me I know!) 

Step 2: After letting the laundry soak, pull out a piece of wet laundry and place it on the wash board of your pila. 

Step 3: Roll the bar of laundry soap all over the wet piece of laundry, paying extra attention to especially dirty or stained areas.   

Step 4: Lightly scrub every inch of it, still paying extra attention to dirty or stained areas and scrubbing them harder if needed. (you can add a bit more water to make this step easier)  

Step 5: Rinse, rinse and rinse some more, until the water poured over the laundry drains out clear. 

Step 6: Ring out the whole thing, try to get as much water out as possible without damaging it. (be especially careful with stretchy fabrics, it's easy to pull/twist them out of shape) 

Step 7: Add this piece to your laundry basket and go back to your 5 gal buckets to start all over again.

Needless to say this process is very time consuming. On average I spend about 1.5 hours a day washing laundry just for the two of us, so if you have children I highly recommend that you don't attempt this. ;)