# washing dishes while camping



## motivated (Sep 6, 2004)

We went camping over Thanksgiving weekend and I used a large pot of boiling water and a little dishsoap in a pan to wash and plain hot water to rinse. It took too long for the water to boil, and seemed to not rinse the best. Ideas? 
I read somewhere that adding a tsp of bleach to the rinse pot would kill the bad bacteria if any was left.
I am going again soon and would love your replies.
Thanks motivated


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## seastar311 (Apr 11, 2008)

We usually just dry wipe our pans and dip the plates and spoons, etc in a bit of bleach water, like back in Girl Scouts. Don't worry so much about spotless dishes til you get home! Grease I wipe up with paper towel, to be used as firestarter later. No trash this way.
Have fun!


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## Lynn Bodoni (Feb 10, 2008)

In Camp Fire Girls, we each had a "ditty bag" which was two loosely woven dishcloths sewn together. I have since learned that this isn't the proper usage of ditty bag, but anyway...we each put our plates, cups, flatware, and anything else we'd used in these bags. We'd dunk and swish them in a huge pot of soapy boiling water, and then in a huge pot of plain boiling water, then hang them up to dry. This seemed to work well enough. Afterwards, we'd wash the pots and pans and other common gear in the soapy water, and rinse.


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## Lynn Bodoni (Feb 10, 2008)

Also in CFG, we used to take along an empty bleach bottle, a nail, bar soap, string and clean old pantyhose. We'd tie the soap in the toe of the pantyhose, fill the bottle with water, make a hole near the bottom of the bottle which was just big enough to admit the nail, and then plug the hole with the nail. We would tie this bottle up on a convenient tree, with the nail on a string, and the pantyhose tied to the bottle. We'd pull out the nail, let water dribble onto our hands, put the nail back in, suds up, and rinse off. Obviously, this was used for camps without running water, but it worked well enough.


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## StaceyS (Nov 19, 2003)

Wasn't Girl Scouts/brownies/Campfire Girls so much fun! I Loved it. The simple things...


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## mythomia (Oct 31, 2008)

Yes, the weeks I was at Girl Scout camp stand out in my memory very clearly, compared to the school year, which was much longer.


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## Nature_Lover (Feb 6, 2005)

I go camping a lot. 
This is how I handle dishes:

put clean water on to heat as soon as we start to eat, this will be rinse water, I use my coffee pot for this (I used to use a metal sprinkling can)

scrape used pots and heat water in them, too, this will be wash water, it doesn't have to boil

drop dishes and silverware to soak in a used pot as soon as they are scraped

if I have two dirty pots, dump one into the one with dirty dishes in it, and use the empty one to rinse soapy dishes into, this will be soapy water for greasy pots washed last. Don't bother to wash soot off the bottoms.

don't put soap in water, only use a few drops of dish soap in a sponge or rag

use tongs to remove hot dishes, utensils, and silverware

wipe with soapy sponge, more soap requires more rinse water, just use enough soap to cut grease

stack dishes as they are washed until they are all clean, then dunk soapy dishes into the soak water to pre-rinse (if it's not too greasy,) then rinse with hot final rinse water and drain, I rinse silverware and utensils in the collander and let them dry in there, a ditty bag or a lingerie bag works, too.

I do it this way because I haul all of our drinking and washing water to our campsite.

I can do all of the dishes for six people in a gallon or less using this method.


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## Oregonsparkie (Sep 3, 2003)

what we use recently is one of those portable coleman that use the 16oz popane cylinder. it has a dial to choose just how hot you want the water and is an on-demand water heater.. The only down side is it is a little bulky


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## dancingfatcat (Jan 1, 2008)

Most of the time I do it pretty much the same way as Nature Lover. I don't do the pre-rinse thing though, I find one rinse to be enough.

But sometimes if there are only a few items or not enough time to heat wash water I will wash in cold water with soap on a cloth and rinse with boiling water. The boiling water I rinse with I keep and use to put the lunch dishes in to soak so I get a double use from the rinse water.


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