Alternative ways to do Laundry

As you know, I am a renter, I do not have laundry facilities in my apartment, and the closest laundromat is quite a walk away. I am also very budget oriented, as I don't have a lot of extra cash lying around. So I had to come up with a way to do my laundry in my house.

I am currently using my bathtub as a washer. It is an interesting way to do laundry, it does take some work, it is by no means easy. So this is how I do it:

1. First of all gather your clothes to be washed and put them in your tub(of course, this is much easier to do when you only have a small load, you can do large loads at a time, but it takes more time)
2. Fill your tub up with water (hot or cold) and add your detergent, I personally use Tide Pods, because they easily dissolve in cold water
3. Let them soak and occasionally stir the clothing around (I personally used the handle of my broom to push the laundry around)
4. Scrub any spots that aren't coming out with soaking. I have a scrubby brush from the dollar store that works well, again this can take time, depending on your size of load.
5. Drain the water out of the tub when you are sure everything is clean
6. Put some more water in the tub to make sure that the soap is rinsed off (if you have a detachable shower head, this works as well)
7. Once everything thoroughly rinsed, (now comes the not so fun part) you have to hand ring water out of the clothes. 
8. Now to dry your clothes, there are two ways to do this in my mind:
1. If you can hang up a clothes line, please do so, this works the best.
2. If its winter or your landlord doesn't allow you to hang up a clothes line, you can get clothes drying racks at Walmart for about $15.00 CAD, these work well if you put a fan in front of them. You can also hang your clothes on the tops of doors, door handles, window cranks, towel holders, and your shower curtain rod.

Note: Make sure to ring out your clothes really well, if you don't, and you hang your clothes indoors, your clothes can get musty, and can drip onto your floor (I always put a towel or basket under the clothes if I hang them inside).

There is also this interesting site I just found earlier today, called alternative-laundry.com, they deliver to the US and Canada. They have very cheap "washers" and "dryers". There is even a washer for $50.00, of course this is done by hand, not electricity, so it still requires work, but it's very small and seems easy to use. They have hand operated and very small electric ones. I am hoping to get the small hand operated washer and possibly an electric dryer. Once I get these, I will update this and let you all know about it!

Make the day count!