Housekeeping - washing, refrigeration and storage

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madian2

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Sorry, some very boring questions:-

1. Hand washing - has anyone any experience of the 'Laundry Pod' for washing small items on board? It just seems to be a large salad spinner and doesn't need power. It doesn't seem to be widely available in the UK and not sure if it is a gimmick or could be quite useful?

2. We have a top loading fridge with 3 straight sides and 1 sloping side. When we use the fridge it is just heaviest items in the bottom with everything piled on top. When sailing and you want something from the bottom it's not ideal! Has anyone come up with a good shelving system or better way of organising a fridge that is this shape?

3. Anyone found any good storage solutions to go on the back of cupboard doors - just trying to maximise all our storage space.

Thanks for any help.
 
I have a Wonder Wash which is the large salad spinner you describe. It is very good at washing clothes and doesn't use too much water. Nevertheless, I find it less hassle to wash by hand or to use a local laundry. You can see a demonstration of the Wonder Wash on YouTube
 
Wonder Wash is excellent. Jill thinks it washes clothes cleaner that our super-duper automatic machine at home.

For exactly the reasons you describe we use a standard Waeco front opening fridge, although modified for water cooling, and accept that the insulation is less good than it could be. It only takes an average of about 1 amp/hour over the 24, which good batteries and solar power can easily cope with.
 
I have a deep top loading fridge and have the same problem. Best solution I have come up with is to use three tupperware containers at the bottom for meat/cooked meat/cheese and two or three colour coded plastic bags on top of them for fruit and vegetables.

This combined with a vertical divider which separates space for cartons and bottles works for me.
 
On your 2. I have the same fridge configuration. I use plastic containers from a dead domestic fridge which are exactly the right shape "3 straight sides and 1 sloping side".
I found them raking through the appliances cabin at the local council recycling yard.
Not a complete solution, but a help.
 
bjl said:
I have a Wonder Wash which is the large salad spinner you describe. It is very good at washing clothes and doesn't use too much water. Nevertheless, I find it less hassle to wash by hand or to use a local laundry. You can see a demonstration of the Wonder Wash on YouTube
Click to expand...

Same here. We dumped our Wonder Wash as it used too much water and found hand washing easier unless we find a cheap laundry nearby
:-)
 
We use stacking plastic baskets in both our fridge and our cool box - both weird sizes so you need to take some measurements and go armed with them and a tape measure to your local cheapy plastic basket store (our best sources were on Milton High Street, Southsea) or try a DIY store like B&Q or Homebase. The end result is not perfect but at least you can lift a whole basket out to get to the ones below - we fitted three larger ones on top of each other in the fridge and a collection of smaller ones in the coolbox with bottles of pop slotted down the side. They do go brittle over time so expect to replace them every 3 or 4 years.

Hooks on cupboard doors then tie string through your sandals or lighter shoes and hang up in pairs. In fact hooks are great everywhere- we have them behind on cabin doors and behind them on the sides of the companionway - useful for hats, flags, and the light airs spinnaker sheet to name but a few of the items you'll find hidden behind ours!

As for the laundry the skipper has already mentioned we got rid of our Wonderwash in favour of builders trugs which are easy to store as they stack, use less water and useful for other things.
 
We have a deep toploading fridge, which I am not allowed near because apparently I disturb everything in it when looking for a beer. But as Jill & Vyv and Duncan will agree my wife is on the short side, so it is a tad amusing watching her retrieving something from the depths of said fridge.
 
Carmel2 said:
We have a deep toploading fridge, which I am not allowed near because apparently I disturb everything in it when looking for a beer. But as Jill & Vyv and Duncan will agree my wife is on the short side, so it is a tad amusing watching her retrieving something from the depths of said fridge.
Click to expand...

Just wait until she falls into it head-first and has to be rescued after 10'. Happened to my 6 year-old daughter (she's now a 50-year-old Prof) when she went hunting ice-lollies in a top opener.

I've given up on attempting my own washing (many means of washing but few, except obsolete mangles for wringing) as I suffer from arthritis which makes it a painful experience. For the fridge use plastic-coated wire baskets - I also have an intermediate shelf which can be slid back and forwards on plastic runners.
 
As Mr Cox claims, the Wonder wash produces cleaner laundry than automatic washing machines.
A hand washing tumble machine Is what I use now. First sail to a spot where getting water is relatively easy, cos even with that little machine I need 40 litres of water for one washing and three times rinsing. Rinsing is the most important part of the cycle.
Boil washing is done only a few times a year ( See pic )

http://s1155.photobucket.com/user/OldBawley/media/Maart2005_0004-Kopie.jpg.html

Recently I acquired an aluminium version off the wonder wash. Painted the drum black, the sun heats the drum to very hot, and the drum can be put onto the wood burning stove or the outdoor wood burning pipe seen in the pic.
Winter 2004 I sailed to Rhodes to get a wiper motor. In those days the streets of Rhodes war littered with abandoned cars and it never rains on Rhodes so I figured a recycled wiper motor would be as good as new. A few hours of DIY and I had an automatic tumbling machine. Solar driven.
I learned that it is not the tumbling witch gives the excellent washing result but the pressure build up inside the drum. ( Don’t ask me why ) So the motor is used for something else, I just give the machine a swing now and then.

Real big stuff is done in the dingy ( Pic )

http://s1155.photobucket.com/user/OldBawley/media/DSCN2054-Kopie.jpg.html

I know, a lot of work, but so is jogging or body- building. Double win.
 
...Hand washing...

Whilst Lesley does virtually all ours by hand - the only exceptions being when a free/very cheap auto-machine's available; that said, much of it gets done by our own inexpensive and water efficient on-board automatic washing machine, of the type which can be installed on any yacht:

1. Buy large bucket and find a way to secure it onto the quarter of the boat - either quarter will do, ours gets tied to the pushpit rail.
2. Fill bucket 2/3 full with water and detergent of your choice
3. Add dirty clothes to the mix and cover the bucket's top with a polythene bag - rubbish sacks work well, it's mainly to prevent any seawater getting in, or much washing water getting out.
4. Lift anchor and go sailing; the longer the better and lumpy seas are better than flat ones.
5. Once re-anchored, transfer clothes to a different bucket, rinse in clean water, get Bob to wring them out and hang out to dry - the drying bit works better once you're well south of the UK.

Lesley's adamant that this system cleans clothes better than the Hotpoint we had at home
 
I would never buy a large bucket.

In the building trades they discard huge quantities of large buckets that were full of plaster, paint and stuff like that, water soluble so if you get one early it can be rinsed out giving a large, strong bucket that is just about sterile. They even have snap on lids. Every cruising yacht should have 6 or more of these on board.

Washing is quite easy. put your washing and powder in the bucket and half fill with fresh water. Take your deck scrubber, which is a scrubbing brush on a broom handle, and plunge it up and down in the bucket. Gently. Hard plunging throws sudsy water all over the deck.

As stated above, much more water is needed to rinse. Some could be saved if there was such a thing as a hand-powered spinner.
 
As to rinsing , since getting water is more and more difficult here in Greece I now rinse in seawater to get rid of dirt and soap, then a last time in sweet water. Reduces the amount of sweet water needed for one “ Machine” with 50%.

Btw, one time I did a boil wash in the aluminium Wonder wash. The stuff was so hot I let everything cool down in the closed drum.
Next morning I discovered the drum had vacuimed itself by cooling down, I could not open the lid for several days. After opening I had to throw away the laundry, smelled at gully. No way to get rid of the smell.
Never ever leave laundry in soapy water for more than 24 hours.

An old fashion clothes wringer works fine, I never wring, not even by hand. Wringing wet laundry is the fastest way to ruin textile.
 
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