By making his hand powered washing machine before you encounter a survival situation, you set yourself up for keeping your clothes clean when the power is out.

Best of all, making this washing machine literally takes less than ten minutes.

Here are the materials you will need:

– One five gallon bucket (lid is optional, in my opinion)
– One toilet plunger
– Power drill or a utility knife

What to do:

All of the above materials can be purchased for less than ten dollars, excluding the power drill. If you are going to be using a lid the first step is to drill a hole in the top. Tip the toilet plunger upside down so that the top of the handle is touching dead center of the lid. Trace a circle around the handle onto the lid. If you have a power drill, find a large bit, I used a half-inch bit, and drill out the circle that you traced. After the hole is cut out use a utility knife to clean up the edges where you cut. If you do not have a power drill you can use a utility knife to cut out the hole,

BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL AND TAKE YOUR TIME!

The plastic bucket is very durable so it can be difficult to cut by hand. Next, I drilled eight holes into the rubber portion of the toilet plunger. Ta-da! You are done! If you want to make the deluxe model I have seen some where people have put a spigot or ball valve on the bottom of the bucket for draining the water. I can see where being able to drain the water from a spigot could be helpful to those that might lack the strength to lift the bucket, but personally I found this feature to be unnecessary.

The Rinse

For the rinse cycle, I fill the bucket back up with clean water and plunge for another five to ten minutes. I dump the water and clothes out, wring the excess water from the clothes and hang them up to air dry. I have found that smaller loads of clothes are easier to plunge and tend to get cleaner. For best results I only fill the bucket halfway to three quarters of the way full with clothes.

The creature comforts of a normal existence are huge morale builders in a survival situation.

One way to do that is to be able to keep your clothes clean; plus, in terms of hygiene, clean clothes reduce your chances of catching an infection or contaminating your living space.

To learn more about how to make this amazing hand powered washing machine, please head on over to Survival Cache.

Featured Image via Conserventures/Flickr