Often, we don’t give enough attention to small but important family issues when preparing for camp. For example, washing dishes. However, it’s worth considering this issue before you head out on a hike. It’s likely that in the process you’ll reconsider a kitchen set, your rations, and the amount of fuel you’ll need for the hike. That’s why we decided to take a closer look at the cleaning process when camping, combining our own experience with advice from the Leave No Trace social movement. Their advice helps all outdoor enthusiasts reduce their impact on the environment and truly leave no trace of their presence on the trails and in the wilderness. You will learn more about How to Washing Dishes While Camping by LCNOutdoors article.
The following advice may seem overly strict, but when hundreds to thousands of hikers pass through in a season, an irresponsible attitude toward the environment, even for something as small as washing up, can have serious unpleasant consequences. For example, food scraps can attract dangerous wildlife to popular campsites, and the experience of swimming in a mountain lake can be ruined by buckwheat and macaroni at the bottom.
So washing up while camping is not just a matter of basic hygiene – it’s also a matter of being responsible for wildlife and respecting other campers who will follow you along the same trails.
Do You Really Need To Wash Up?
If you organize your diet properly, blunt your pettiness, and keep the number of dishes to a minimum, dishwashing will be reduced to rinsing with boiling water. This practice is best known to easy-going people, who are used to cooking all their meals in one pot. You cook the porridge, eat it, wash the pot, and use it to make tea. Of course, there is no talk of high-quality food here, and such a cooking and washing-up style will not appeal to anyone.
You can significantly reduce the amount of dishwashing by using ready-to-use freeze-dried foods that can be cooked in their own packages. After eating, only the spoons need to be washed, while the packaging as bowls goes into sealed waste bags or into the fire.
Washing Which Dishes for Camping Gear?
Before we go camping, we need to collect a small set of items to wash our camping utensils. All of the items we listed take up very little space and can usually be placed in a cup or water bottle. Alternatively, you can put them in a small Ziploc bag.
It is not uncommon for food to burn on portable burners, especially when cooking porridge, sauces, and main dishes. If this happens, it is worth scraping the burnt residue off the walls of the cookware before washing. A civilized and as gentle as the possible utensil is a thin, hard plastic spatula with rounded edges. available from Bubgo stores. An alternative to this scraper is a good plastic spatula for non-stick pans. But to save weight and space, the handle must be cut off, so you must hold down your mercy.
A plastic spatula is great for cleaning any cookware, but it is essential for scraping carbon from anodized aluminum or non-stick coatings. This prevents scratches from appearing on the surface. Titanium and stainless steel are whimsical – it’s hard to scratch them, so you can use sand, small pebbles, or metal sponges to remove carbon deposits from these dishes.
Even small food residues are best taken away. If this is not possible, they should be disposed of properly by burning them or burying them in a hole away from camp and water.
Tip.
A large portion of the grease and small food particles can be removed from the walls of the dishes with a small amount of toilet paper before washing. This can greatly reduce water consumption, and sometimes there is no need to even routinely wash dishes – a rinse with boiling water is sufficient. The used paper should be taken away or disposed of on-site – burned by fire or buried in a hole away from the camp. Wet paper towels can be used instead of toilet paper, but remember that wet paper towels are plastic waste and not recyclable, so avoiding or minimizing their use is recommended.
It is best not to use synthetic detergents that are used at home. In most cases, they contain toxic substances and need to be rinsed thoroughly in clean tap water, which is in very limited supply on hikes. Flushing detergents into streams, ponds, or rivers is not an option.
Natural remedies work well to remove fat and small food debris from the walls of your plate: mustard powder, baking soda, crushed chalk, or fine ash from a fire. They are cheap, easily available, effective, easy to rinse, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly. The process of washing with them is simple. Pour the powder into your dishes, moisten it with a few drops of water to make a soft paste, then wipe all the walls of your cup or pan with it. Thanks to its abrasive properties, the paste simultaneously binds grease and effectively removes dirt.
If you want a more civilized solution, biodegradable detergents specifically designed for campers can be found on the market today. The best known in the camping environment are produced by LCN. They contain no toxic ingredients, do not affect pH levels, and break down relatively quickly in the soil to environmentally friendly ingredients. However, you should also not flush them into the water supply as this will slow down the decomposition process many times over as the bacteria that break them down are concentrated in the soil layers.
It is usually not necessary to bring sponges with you when camping. Just take the hard side of the sponge and cut off most of the foam. It eliminates the need for foaming detergent, and the cut-off sponge effectively removes food particles from dishes, takes up less space, is lighter, easier to rinse, and most importantly, dries quickly when wrung out. Or you can use a bundle of grass instead of a sponge – as long as your camping area has plenty of it.
The finishing touch to your camping gear is an absorbent cloth to wipe down pots and other items after rinsing. An old microfiber towel is ideal: it weighs little, takes up little space, absorbs water well, and dries quickly when tied to your backpack or tent’s tent.
Where To Wash Dishes And Camping Gear?
There is only one important rule here: wash dishes about 164 feet (50 meters) from water sources – streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, and other things. This will prevent dirty water and food debris from entering local water bodies. It is especially important to observe this principle in areas with arid climates, where freshwater is scarce, and where ecosystems are fragile and valuable. For example, when camping on the shores of Lake Baikal, don’t be so lazy that you have to walk 70 steps to wash your dishes off the water’s edge.
In wet climates, wetlands, and seaside areas, the 164 foot (50 meters) rule is less strict, especially if you are on an unpopular tourist route. Dense vegetation cover, mosses, dense reeds, and sedge bushes act as effective filters, and huge bodies of water with rich fauna are less susceptible to biodegradable food waste.
It’s not terrible if you rinse your pots with buckwheat residue in the waters of the Mississippi River on a wilderness road. But if the line is popular, with dozens of visitors resting in the parking lot during the high season, it’s better to stay away from the water for the sake of washing dishes. Otherwise, food residue from the pans may be deposited at the bottom near the shore – which can ruin the experience for other hikers and may attract wildlife.
If you are staying at an organized campground, there should be a designated washing area on site.
How Do I Wash My Dishes And Utensils?
Don’t put off washing dishes – fat and food particles that have dried to the walls are much harder to wash off. First, use a spatula to clean dishes from burnt food and uneaten residue. If you’re on a popular travel route, it’s a good idea to take them with you, put them in a dry garbage bag as trash, or burn them in a fire. Otherwise, discarded leftover food can attract wildlife and ruin other visitors’ perceptions of the campground. If you are traveling in the wilderness, then leftover food and biodegradable waste can be distributed over a large area away from the campground.
Before washing, you can use a small amount of toilet paper to remove most of the fat and small food particles from the walls of the bowl. This can significantly reduce the amount of water used, and sometimes it can allow you to forgo daily dishwashing – rinsing with boiling water is sufficient. The used paper must be carried with you or disposed of on the spot – burned over a fire or buried in a hole away from the camp. You can use wet paper towels instead of toilet paper, but remember that this is plastic waste that cannot be recycled, so eliminating or minimizing its use is recommended.
If you have a small amount of dishes to wash, such as just one pot, you can pour a little warm water into the pot and wipe it down with detergent. Then pour the water out of the pot, pour in some water, and bring it to a boil to make sure it is as clean as possible and also disinfect the walls. If you have a lot of plates and bowls, it’s easier to wash them in a large communal pot, Ziploc bag, folding bucket, or washbasin. Ideally, you should make two of these simple sinks for washing and rinsing.
Water for the initial wash can be drawn from a local body of water, but for dishes that have been cleaned of grease and soot, rinse only with potable-quality water. It is best to rinse thoroughly with boiling water. It is especially important to adhere to this rule in hot climates or risk food-borne infections.
When you’re on a road trip, three large plastic containers are ideal for washing dishes. One for washing and two for rinsing – with “process” water and drinking water. Rinsing can also be done in one container, but only if you are sure the water used is safe. In areas where the risk of intestinal infection is high, a small amount of chlorine bleach can be added to the rinse water as a disinfectant.
Spread the dirty water away from the campsite and water body or carefully pour it into a small hole 4 inches (10 cm) deep but within the soil layer. Allow the water to soak in, then backfill the soil. No Trace Sports also recommends filtering this water through gauze or a sieve on particularly popular hiking trails to minimize the amount of food residue on the trail and to completely eliminate its impact on the local ecosystem.
After washing and rinsing, wipe down clean dishes with an absorbent towel/bath towel or toilet paper to avoid packing wet frying pans, utensils, and bowls in your backpack.
We hope this short guide to washing up will reduce the number of questions you have about camping. For other questions, the material in our blog will be helpful, and you can always ask questions on our social media or to the experts on the LCN website.