How to Conserve Water

For dishwashing you need treated water for the final rinse, but even if you start with treated water, the food particles that you are washing off the dishes will reverse any treatment.

The practice of commercial kitchens, which can be adapted to emergencies, uses three sinks.

The wash tub is lukewarm, soapy and dirty. The rinse tub is hot, and will become soapy and dirty. The sterilizing tub is very hot and treated.

You begin the process with three tubs of hot water, you put soap in the wash tub and sterilizing compound (bleach most likely) in the sterilizing tub. You wash dishes until there are no soap bubbles in the wash tub. As you work you put the washed dishes in the rinse tub. After they sit in the rinse tub, you swish them around in the rinse tub and put them into the sterilizing compound. Keep your hands out of the sterilizing tub, to the extent possible. It should be uncomfortably hot.

When the wash tub stops having soap bubbles and the sterilizing tub starts having soap bubbles, you discard the wash water and fill it with hot water and sterilizer. The wash tub is now reincarnated as the sterilizing tub. The addition of soap to the former rinse tub converts it to a wash tub. The former sterilizer tub is now the rinse tub. This conserves water and soap. It can be done in a standing three part sink or with three large pots or basins. The discarded wash water can be used to flush toliets or soak heavily soiled pots or dishes. It works best if the dishes are throughly scraped of food particles. My preference is to sort dishes by degree of attention required. I start with silverware and end with cook pots. There is no special reason for that, except that cook pots sometimes need soaking.

The same system works for clothes. If you are doing heavily soiled clothes or diapers, the addition of a fourth tub for presoaking is very beneficial.

Commercial kitchens have an official version of this, though its practice dates much earlier. Mother Bickerdyke volunteered early in the Civil War and worked as a cook and nurse for Union Forces in the Western Theatre. Someone complained to General Sherman that Mother Bickerdyke was interfering, Sherman said "She ranks me." Also, consider that Mother Bickerdyke did not know about the germ theory of disease. She was just a cleanliness "nut." But the system she used sterilized things, she may not have know why it worked, but she knew it worked.

Sanitizing Solution: For hard, nonporous surfaces -- 1 Tablespoon liquid bleach to 1 gallon water Allow to air dry, no rinsing

-- flora (***@__._), June 04, 1999

Answers

Just a reminder: DON'T put bleach in the soapy water. The chemicals in the soap and bleach have a bad reaction together. I made this mistake in my younger (dumber) days, and broke out in hives.

-- galoma (galoma@saintmail.net), June 04, 1999.