Camping Clean: tips for staying clean in the wilderness.
Note: this post was created from a recent newsletter. It got such good reception, I thought I would share it with you all here.
Camping season is here. I'm so stoked! I already spend a huge amount of time outside with plants, but there's something even more special about up rooting myself and my teenage daughters and getting us all out in the wild for a few days.
A friend of mine who is a SERE Guide for the Air Force, used to tell me on our camping trips that you can really get to know what a person is made of after 5 days of camping. How they handle being in the backcountry without amenities for extended periods of time will tell you what kind of perseverance they really have.
Two nights is just fun and you come home smelling a little smoky. Three days you start to get dirty and really smokey and maybe sore from sleeping on the ground. Come day five the truth comes out. It's time to figure out how to get clean. If you have long hair like me, your first thought by day five is, "I must wash my hair!"
With that thought in mind, I want to let you in on a little secret, not so secret tip. You can take your Nettlesome soap out in to the woods! You can wash your body, your hair, your feet, your dishes, clothing, whatever needs a bit of soap to help get things clean, you can use this soap for that. Best of all it's not in a bottle. So you don't have to worry about bottle pressure blowouts when traveling to higher elevations!
A few tips for using soap in the wilderness:
Never leave your soap in the tent. Even unscented soap is scented to animals and will attract them to your tent.
Throw the dish/washing up water on to the base of the plant and choose a different plant each time. Choose a plant that is well away from your tent and eating area. Once again to avoid attracting animals.
If you get a stain on your clothes, you can use the soap as prep stain remover. Wet the spot to be cleaned with water and then rub the soap bar vigorously over the spot. Wash immediately or when you are ready to wash other things.
To wash your hair get the hair throughly wet, then rub the bar all over your head and then give your hair and scalp a good scrubbing with your fingers, just like in the shower at home. If you have long hair you may need to lather up twice. Rinse throughly.
To wash dishes, simply fill a washing vessel with hot water get your sponge or cloth wet rub the soap on the cloth and begin washing. Continue to apply soap to the cloth as needed while doing dishes.
