Since we started wearing clothes, we’ve been doing laundry. How we’ve done that laundry has come a long way and it’s one of the cases where history has maintained slow, constant progress up until relatively recent times, where progression has bottle-necked a little. If you’re bored or you like old stuff, you can check out the History of Laundry and the Evolution of Washing Technology (ignore the advertising side) to get some ideas, both for the mechanics and the plants and chemicals and soaps that were used for them.

Using history and modern innovation, we now have a lot of options for keeping our clothes clean, even if we end up off the grid, conserving power, or lacking electricity entirely. We can also adapt some of the being-forgotten methods of limiting how much laundry we have to do in the first place. There’s also some options for the types of soaps we use, and some things to be aware of when we’re counting on good hygiene to help keep us healthy because we have limited access to medical care…. read more here