dish-washing - The Phillosoph Blog

Why a bucket?

Recently I blogged on the topic of dish-washing. Today, I want you to imagine that you are somewhere far from civilized plumbing. You may want to wash your cookware, clothing or you may want to wash yourself. What do you do?

Some of you, I suspect, may suggest that you head for the nearest body of water and wash there. We will assume you have been prudent and lucky enough to have placed your camp within an easy travel distance of water. Not too close, to limit hassles from insects.

Washing yourself or your dishes in a body of water is not ideal. Even in parts of the world where that water is not inhabited by crocodiles, alligators, mosquitoes, schistosomiasis or similar.

The problem is that your activity generates what is known as “greywater” or “sullage”. Dirty water, soap or detergent, and also suspended fats, grease and food particles.

Even if you use biodegradable products, biodegradation takes time! While this process is on-going, your greywater may have various effects on the body of water, including changes in pH, viscosity and changes in oxygen level.

A much better approach is to cast your greywater on to the soil, some distance from the nearest body of water. The creatures of the soil can deal with greywater much better than those of the water, and any effects are more localized. Choose ground that is absorbent, and do not use the same place on consecutive days.

OK, so you have seen the wisdom of washing some distance from the water source. Just how do you get the water to wash with to the desired location?

Your water bottle or bladder probably only holds a litre or three. You have probably treated the contents to make them safe for drinking, so using this for washing is a little wasteful. Your canteen cup probably only holds half a litre or so. You may have larger cooking pans, but for efficiency these will only be a couple or litres capacity or less. Many modern designs do not have handles suited to carrying a couple of kilos of liquid any distance.

You could fabricate a water carrier from local materials. Kephart has a whole chapter on making utensils from bark. Such crafts take time, and suitable materials will not be available in every environment or season.

Would it not have been useful if you had brought a plastic bucket with you?

Buckets for Preppers

I recall being in a bar decades ago. I had just rented a new place, actually my first real flat with multiple rooms I did not have to share with anyone. I was chatting to a young woman and told her: “I have brought a plastic bucket and bowl, so I am all set!” Many years and many locations later, that same bucket and bowl are still with me. Used the bowl just a few weeks back to soak the grill of my halogen oven.

Some will scoff! “I'm a backpacker! I go ultra-light! There is no room for a bucket!”.

Empty buckets weight very little. Being mass-produced, they cost very little too! Shop around!

If you pack the bucket full of foodstuffs and other stores, it will take up very little room in your pack. It actually provides them with some protection. Oddly, some larger capacity buckets pack better than their smaller cousins. More on capacity later.

What Use Is a Bucket?

What uses can we put a bucket to? We have already mentioned carrying water for washing, dish-washing and laundry.

• A friend of mine gave me a folding camping sink that holds about ten litres. Not a priority for the bug-out bag, but he thought it might be useful for more recreational camping trips. I now look at this item and wonder just how I was supposed to fill it. Ten litres of water is around 22 pounds! A filled, folding sink is not something you want to carry from a standpipe. I would have needed a bulk-water carrier, or a bucket.

If you have tried the techniques in my dish-washing article, you will know that you do not need a large capacity vessel to wash most items.

You can use a small bowl or bucket of water to wash a large diameter item such as a plate, frying pan or yourself!

Use a cup, or your hand, as a water ladle to wet and rinse. The dirty water does not go back into the vessel, so it is cleaner and more efficient.

I doubt that folding sink will ever see use. I will find a bucket that fits into my pack. A bucket will probably be more durable than a sink/bowl designed to fold.

• Read through a survival manual or book on woodcraft, and you will probably come across references to soaking things to make them more pliable or more edible. You cannot fit much in a mess-tin!

• Cannot reach the water source? Bucket on a rope may solve that problem.

• Let the water come to you! Place your bucket to collect rainwater.

• Successful day fishing or squirrel shooting? Carry your windfall back to camp in a bucket.

• Find a patch of berries? Your bucket will hold as much as you can carry.

As a quick aside: In one of Ray Mears shows one of his local hosts had an interesting berry-picking technique. She simply swiped the bush with her basket. Enough berries apparently detached and ended up in the basket for this to be a considerable labour-saving. Something to experiment with in berry season!

• An empty bucket can be used as a drum to guide companions back to camp, or just let them know dinner is nearly ready.

• A bucket can be used to dig through soft snow or sand.

• A up-turned bucket makes a useful stool and (if sturdy enough) can be used as a step.

• If you have trouble squatting when attending to “calls of nature” an up-turned bucket can be a useful support while you hang your nether-regions over a “cat-hole”.

• And if it is really nasty outside the shelter, as a vase de nuit.

Any party of more than a couple of individuals should include a bucket in their equipment.

Smaller parties and solo travellers should give them serious consideration.

Any vehicle, be it boat, SUV or APC, should find room for a bucket. The interior of the bucket can be used to store other useful items. In an emergency, grab the bucket and be instantly equipped with useful assets.

Some companies even offer 72-hour kits packed in buckets.

Green ten litre bucket

Choosing a Bucket

For backpackers, cyclists and lightweight travellers, the bucket chosen needs some consideration.

Obviously, we want a bucket that will fit easily into our pack, with little wasted space.

There is little point in my recommending a bucket of a certain capacity. In my kitchen I have two buckets, not counting one for floor-washing. The five litre bucket is too narrow at the bottom. It will fit in a daysack, but it is space-inefficient. The three (Imperial) gallon bucket is about twice the capacity (13.6 litres) but is too wide at the top for even my largest rucksacks.

The interior dimensions of your pack will be more significant than bucket capacity. Taking your pack down to the hardware store and trying some buckets for size is not that bad an idea. Remember the bucket will be riding above your softer pack items, so perhaps put a sleeping bag and a realistic load of clothing in the pack before you hit the hardware store.

Depending on intended role, you may want bright colours or natural and neutral. The outside of a bucket can easily be spray-painted.

Cylindrical buckets, with the bottom of similar diameter to the top, may be a better choice than more conventional tapered designs. Between five and ten litre size may be a good option for these.

If you decide to buy a bucket on-line, bear in mind that perfectly suitable items may be available under various other names, such as “paint kettle” or “storage tub”. There will be bowls and various other containers that can be made into buckets with just the simple addition of a handle.

Watching the TV the other night, and an advert for washing-up liquid urges me to wash-up with cold water! Really? That's a new one, I thought.

On the other hand [pun intended!], I have been washing my hands in cold water for more than a decade. I got into the habit in Brazil, where it is common for sinks to have only a cold-water tap.

Money is tight and fuel prices have jumped. Anything that saves the use of hot-water is attractive both ecologically and economically.

I try to approach decisions scientifically, so I did a little research. I found this interesting article on the BBC website:

What's the best way to clean your dishes?

Washing-up detergent and scrubbing is more important than water temperature! As a microbiologist, among other things, I was already aware that washing-up water is generally not hot enough to kill many bacteria.

It just happens that currently I am reading Alexander Kira's fascinating study “The Bathroom”. This is recommended reading and some aspects from this book will doubtless feature in future posts in this blog.

Kira notes that washing under running water generally uses less water than filling a hand-basin. He also points out that showering is more efficient at getting you clean than having a bath. Baths are primarily for relaxation, and you are actually soaking in any dirt that was removed. If you want to be clean after a bath, finish your routine with a shower.

There is an obvious parallel here: I expect we all know someone who continues to wash dishes in water that resembles weak chicken soup!

Another gem from Kira is that effective washing is in four stages: wetting/pre-rinse, soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing. Note that only the first and last of these needs running water. You can turn the tap off when soaping and scrubbing, so the tap is only running a few seconds for each item you wash.

Armed with new knowledge, I began washing the dishes.

Here, I must confess! I often eat alone, so cooking and eating often generates just four or five items to wash. Not enough to fill up a sink for, so I will often leave the job until there is more.

Very quickly, dishwashing becomes a big job, and one that it is temping to put off. Yes, I can be a bit of a slob when my lady is absent!

There were thus no shortage of items on which to try running cold-water washing! There was a baking tray, some plates, bowls, a cup and cutlery.

The first surprise was how much less time washing-up seemed to take. I seemed to have done it all in less time than it would have taken for the water to run hot and fill the sink.

All items were clean, some possibly cleaner than if they had been washed in a sink that had already cleaned other items. As a bonus, the sink was not coated in grease!

Effectively, you are giving your dishes a cold Navy shower!

Quicker, cheaper, easier and probably cleaner. What is not to like?

Even if you tend to put-off washing-up, you will know that you will save yourself effort in the future if you rinse the food off the plates before it dries. What “Rick and Morty” calls “schmutz”.

Consider this: By the time you have rinsed a plate and scraped the food off, you are already halfway through a running cold-water wash-up! Add a little washing-up liquid, another scrub and rinse and the job has been done. No more washing-up to do later for that item!

The speed of this method lets you prevent washing-up from piling up. You can wash-up a couple of items while waiting for the kettle to boil, or during the advert break of a movie.

An added bonus of this technique is that I find I tend to pay more attention to each item. Not only do they get cleaner, but the chance of breakages and chips seems less.

Another labour-saving tactics is to let the wet stuff drain and air-dry. Only use a tea-towel when an item is still wet when you put it away or need it.

Detergent

Running cold-water washing may result in you using more washing-up liquid than you used with traditional washing. You will need to experiment to optimize your use of detergent.

Placing the detergent on the sponge or brush may make it go further. Some items, such as a oily grill pan, seem to clean better if a pea-sized amount of detergent is placed on them directly and then worked around.

A running cold-water wash may not be ideal for all items, but works well for most of the items that you commonly wash.

Hot and Cold Soaking

Some items may need a hot-water soak. The heat can be beneficial in softening food deposits and melting fats. If you boil a kettle for tea or coffee there is usually some hot water left unused. Put this to good use on your washing-up.

Rather than fill a whole sink with hot-water and detergent, try filling a smaller bowl or pan and soaking the items in there. My only caution is not to place metal objects in a pot with a non-stick finish.

Do not hot-soak any vessel that has been used to make dough or batter. Flour and hot-water is effectively glue!

Soak the interior of such vessels in cold-water and you will find them much easier to clean when you wash them.

Greasy Frying Pans

In “Camping and Woodcraft”, Kephart gives us some valuable advice on how he cleaned his utensils deep in the woods. Game is generally deficient in fats, so cooking in the frying pan with bacon or bacon-fat was the norm:

“First, as to the frying-pan, which generally is greasiest of all: pour it nearly full of water, place it level over the coals, and let it boil over. Then pick it up, give a quick flirt to empty it, and hang it up. Virtually it has cleaned itself, and will dry itself if let alone. Greasy dishes are scraped as clean as may be, washed with scalding water, and then wiped. An obdurate pot is cleaned by first boiling in it (if you have no soap powder) some wood ashes, the lye of which makes a sort of soap of the grease; or it may be scoured out with sand and hot water. Greasy dishes can even be cleaned without hot water, if first wiped with a handful or two of moss, which takes up the grease; use first the dirt side of the moss as a scourer, then the top.”

You probably don't have a lit camp-fire at home, and we are trying to save fuel. A similar trick can be used at home, however.

Once you are done cooking, turn off the heat, and add a few mils of water to the frying pan. Adding a large volume may drop the temperature too quickly and may damage the pan. It is very likely to crack glass and ceramic vessels, so I will stress using a very small volume of water for this method, and usually for metal pans only.

A small amount of water, added in this manner, will “deglaze” a pan. This is a quick way to make sauces or gravies, but can also pre-clean a pan.

The water takes the heat of the pan, loosening food particles and floating fats. Give the pan a quick scrub with a soft-brush and discard the water, fats and debris. Let the pan cool down while you eat your meal.

Deglazing makes washing the pan later considerably easier.

And Finally

Some items are best cleaned with a brush, others with a sponge or fibre-pad. Have a selection of scrubbing tools available.

Once you have finished dish-washing, do not forget to wash the sponges, fibre-pads and brushes that you used for scrubbing. Work some detergent into them and rinse and squeeze-out as much grease as you can. Place them were they can dry.