First, for those who still care, no word yet on DD2.

Now for the reason of my post: how do y'all wash dishes while out camping? We just got back from a 3 day/2 night trip and I ran into a problem. We weren't allowed to dump waste water on the ground where we were at so I was limited to how much water I could use to clean the dishes. I ended up just boiling everything with a minimum of water and scraping out any solids. Nobody got sick, but I didn't really like this method.

Back in the scouts we had a big "lobster pot" we kept on the fire boiling away, but that wasn't possible at this site. When I'm by myself is just a steel cup. This time it was the family + others which led to a lot more dishes (actual eating was done with plasticware and paperplates all of which came back to civilization.

Any suggestions? I stuck this in the survival forum because I thought it would apply to people bugging out.

Thanks.
-Blast

If you weren't allow to dump it on the ground, were you told what you could do with it? Were you near a water source? What did they have as toilet facilities, a hole-in-the-ground privy, or a contained unit? If it was a privy, I would have considered dumping it there. Why draw a line between gray water and black water if you're letting black water enter the ecosystem? <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

The only thing that comes to mind is to take an empty 5-gallon jug or bucket with a tight-fitting lid (and one of those bucket openers), and dump it all in there, and empty it at an RV dump site (or take it home).

If you are cooking over a fire, you can cheat.

While the item is still dirty, drop in a bit of wood ash and enough clean water to make a paste, scrubbing with a bit of paper towl or rag. The lye in the ash will mix with any fat in there to form soap. Scrape slurry out, rinse with fresh water.

Otherwise, while things are still freshly dirty, wipe out with paper towel or TP, and as little clean water is possible. Pour it into a seperate container. That goes into the latrine. If it has a chance to dry, or worse, burn on, a bit of green scrubby works wonders so long as you aren't packing anything teflon (which should never need it in the first place).

Don't know how applicable it is to survival or long-term camping, but when backpacking I often limit my cooking to boiling water and adding it to various dried foods.

If you pack the food in a ziplock bag, add the water to the bag, then eat from the bag, you can avoid dishwasing all together.

Bear

Cowboys never "washed" their cooking gear, instead they cleaned them by rubbing everything down with sand.

I have been camping all of my life (and that is a lot of years, and a lot of camping trips), and I have never seen a campground that would not allow dumping dish water. Many campgrounds even have a grey water dumping site in each campsite, or at least centrally located. Have to give this some thought, but right off the top of my head, the privy, or your five gal can thing are all that come to mind...

I wonder if there was a problem bear or bears in the area. If that were the case I'd be leery of dumping water that was heavily laden with food particles.

Could be. If any nearby bears were hard up enough to want to dig into waste water for little bitty chunks of scrambled egg, I would be worrying about my main food supply too. Even in Yoseite and Sequoia Natioal Parks, where the bears are notorious for food scrounging, they don't prohibit grey water dumping (at least not as of my last visit, which admittedly has been a couple of years)...

Most of the food remnants can be wiped out of the container with a paper towel, which is then burned.

From what I understand, the 'washing dishes with sand' is just an old tale. It's not going to take the grease off, and guess what rancid grease is going to cause? Yep. Cowboys were hard workers, and they couldn't take time off every twenty minutes for a bout of diarrhea.

Sue

We were at private campgrounds attached to the Texas Renaissance Festival. For eight weekends in a row 1,000+ people descend on to this land and set up there camps helter skelter (no designated plots). Most arrive and set up after dark as they worked that day. The management got sick of people complaining when they discovered the next morning that they had pitched their tents on top of some else's food goo. Management's response: no dumping any waste water on the ground. You can walk around the campgrounds with nothing but a chainmal loincloth, a Scottish claymore and large bottle of rum and the cops won't bother you. But if they see you spit your toothpaste onto the ground you can get tossed out. <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Dumping the water in the portapotties is one possiblity, but from a hygiene point of view that has it's own riskes. I'm pretty sure Monday morning a crew comes by and just burns the johns down rather than tries cleaning them up! They are pretty nasty.

Anyway, that's why I posted the question. I was hoping someone might have a neat trick. if not I'll go with the wiping the pots out, rinse with boiling water then burn the paper towel.

-Blast