Keep Clothes Clean While Camping With This Affordable And Effective DIY Washing Machine Hack

Camping in the great outdoors can be wonderful, but if you're a clean freak, the dirt and grime associated with it may make you want to run screaming in the direction of a five-star hotel instead. Campsites aren't the easiest place to do laundry, and bringing suitcases full of clean clothing doesn't exactly match the camping aesthetic. You can try these essential tips for packing dirty clothing to stop bad odors. However, if you don't want the wildlife to run in fear of your stinky socks and sweaty shorts, you may want to try out an effective DIY washing machine hack for camping. It involves a drill, a magic marker, two buckets with lids, and two plungers, and it's very easy and affordable to do.

It's best to get everything ready before you head out, since a drill probably isn't on your camping list between bug spray and campfire snacks. According to the website Let's Camp S'more, you use a drill with a 3/4-inch bit to drill holes in the center of two bucket lids. Label one as "wash" and one as "rinse" with a marker (or color-code them, as the site says). Then, put the plunger handle through the hole and stick the rest of it in the bucket. There are variations on this simple DIY project, but this is the basic setup. 

To use this DIY washing machine, put in your dirty clothes (Let's Camp S'more suggests washing the least dirty first) and add water and detergent until the bucket is about 3/4 full. Then, you can plunge and swirl to get the garments clean. Wring out the clothing, and add them to the rinse bucket, agitating until they're free of soap. The website Primal Survivor suggests drilling a few holes in the plunger head as well, to make it easier to move. This site has another option where you use two buckets, one inside the other. Drill holes for the inside bucket so the water drains out when you lift it up and spin it around. (Either method can be done without a lid, but it's messier.) It's best to use a biodegradable detergent like castile soap. Then, wring everything out, and hang up the wet items on a clothesline with clothespins to dry.

You can find some helpful camping laundry items at Dollar Tree, including some of the ones for this project, like inexpensive laundry bags, clothespins, and twine to create a clothesline. It also has plungers, and you can get a 5-gallon bucket for less than $5 at the time of this writing at Lowe's, with a matching lid for around $2. Finally, if cleanliness is something you can't live without, no matter what sort of vacation you take, check out travel pro Rick Steves' best tips for staying clean while traveling.