Well I tried it! I told you I would in my handwashing dishes challenge. I wanted to know if it would actually be worth my time and energy to hand wash our clothes to lower our electric bill.
Well for right now in our current situation the answer is no. It would not be worth the amount of time and effort for me to wash our clothes by hand. Right now our house is tiny. And it's crowded with stuff. Our bathroom is actually pretty big but trying to wash clothes in the bathtub proved to be more hurtful on my back than anything else. Bending over to scrub out stains and dirt on jeans and then stomping, stomping, stomping on the clothes to get them washed and rinsed was really hard inside the tub. The worst part though was lifting the wet heavy clothes out of the tub, wringing them out and then carting them into the laundry room/our little closet to spin them dry otherwise it would probably take 3 days for them to dry. Of course it was probably harder than it really needed to be for my first adventure because I decided to wash jeans, which all our jeans get dirty so fast living in the country not to mention the fact that Hubby is in construction, and blankets. I think those are the heaviest items I could have tried to start with.
But with all the complaints above I told Hubby that once we are on our property, have a washing station so I'm not bending over that I would consider doing it again. It actually felt good doing some hard work. I have so much time between loads of laundry that I fall into my lazy habits. I actually think it could be really nice. I could have the station near where the kids like to play. They could be enjoying some great outside play, I could be working but enjoying watching them play, and we could all be outside enjoying the nice sunshine. Don't ask about winter, I'm not ready to think about that yet :) Instead of sitting around I could just make a chore I loath become something that maybe I actually would find enjoyment in. Today I feel like I got more accomplished by handwashing the 3 loads of clothes than the 4 loads I put through the washing machine. Either way I sure got a lot of laundry done and I know that the 3 loads that I handwashed had to save on electric because I hardly used any water compared to the washing machine and I actually think the they are cleaner than the washer ones as well. I'm going to mix the jeans up and see if Hubby knows the difference between the two. We will see ;)
But with all the complaints above I told Hubby that once we are on our property, have a washing station so I'm not bending over that I would consider doing it again. It actually felt good doing some hard work. I have so much time between loads of laundry that I fall into my lazy habits. I actually think it could be really nice. I could have the station near where the kids like to play. They could be enjoying some great outside play, I could be working but enjoying watching them play, and we could all be outside enjoying the nice sunshine. Don't ask about winter, I'm not ready to think about that yet :) Instead of sitting around I could just make a chore I loath become something that maybe I actually would find enjoyment in. Today I feel like I got more accomplished by handwashing the 3 loads of clothes than the 4 loads I put through the washing machine. Either way I sure got a lot of laundry done and I know that the 3 loads that I handwashed had to save on electric because I hardly used any water compared to the washing machine and I actually think the they are cleaner than the washer ones as well. I'm going to mix the jeans up and see if Hubby knows the difference between the two. We will see ;)
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