read this somewhere...tried it. it was QUITE effective.

If you cook a meal that has some grease/fat over a WOOD fire, you have everything you need to clean up.

Add a bit of water (hotter is better) and some of the ash from your fire to the pan. Tada! You have basically begun to make lye soap in the pan. Scrub it out with some pine needles. The solution/paste can be rather harsh, so be sure to rinse your hands well.

Be sure you use water that is safe to drink.
Hotter the water the better
Harder woods are better than softer woods.
You can help heat up the paste/solution by tossing in a chunk of hot charcoal
When the charcoal cools you can use it to scrub the pan

Yes, I know that in the olden days, people didn't wash a lot of stuff very often, including themselves (like in the days of the Black --Bubonic-- Plague). Going back to those conditions with our delicate, non-resistant, anti-bacterial-doused bodies that don't have a high tolerance to bacteria seems like an invitation to problems.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/clean-your-cooking-gear-with-wood-ashes/

That takes care of the dishes. Hands and body not so easy. My sister makes a soap from goat milk and other ingredients but not sure how practical that might be in our hypothetical situation (plus she lives over five hours away). Laundry probably beaten on rocks like in the old days.

Necessary to thin out the herd so to speak. Current germs and viruses have become so resistant to so many antibiotics it is not that unthinkable that another plague of sorts lies in our near future. I digress however. But in this situation it is very likely things (and people) won't get cleaned like they should.