by AzAv8r » Tue Sep 06, 2016 11:28 pm
Dawn has always worked well for us, and I much prefer it to other soaps for dishes because of its effectiveness at dissolving fats and oils. But note that any soap, Dawn included, needs a fair amount of water - the soap is basically an emulsifier which allows oil to be dissolved in water - it does not destroy the oil. No water? just a gooey mess. And a little warmth is necessary to maintain a surface for the soap to attack. You had some heat for the dinner; apply it briefly again for clean-up. You don't need much.
To save water, we generally:
- If we've planned poorly and have leftovers we aren't going to save, shovel excess food bits into the fire or a hole in the ground, or feed to the pup, as appropriate to the circumstances. Mechanical assistance (scraper, sand, rock, stick, dog's tongue) applied as appropriate. (The dog rarely gets to vote, as he is quite biased as to the appropriate solution.) This, combined with the next step, minimize the work the Dawn + warm water need to do.
- wipe thoroughly with paper towels which also go in the fire (or trash, if you can't have a fire).
- wash with a little warm water and Dawn, then rinse with clean water.
With appropriate staging, the water consumption can be minimized: the pot gets the water (little) and soap, then heated slightly. Everything gets washed, the dirty soapy water is discarded (often to some container to be used to douse ashes in the morning, or do the next set of dishes), the cleaned dishes go back in the pot for rinsing under the spray head. Rinsing is minimized by moving rinsed items aside; each subsequent item requires less water since it was partially rinsed by the overspray from its precedent. The official word on sanitization is that you need lots of heat, something you aren't going to get easily at altitude, especially on a cold night, if you are using water to carry the heat. But I believe the CDC reports that you just have to give the soap about 15 seconds on most evil critters to send them off to never-never land. The best bet would be a bleach soak after the rinse, but that again requires more water and something we've not done unless we didn't trust the water source. Granted, one might spray-rinse with a bleach solution.
Car-camping and not being particularly conservative (and perhaps excepting a menu with pasta, rice, or dried beans), we always use less than 1 gallon per person per day, each of which includes per person two hot meals, three cups of coffee, lots of hand-washing, and a "shower" - using a wash cloth to soap, scrub, and rinse; plus the break-camp fire-dousing and cleanup. We usually do dishes at breakfast and dinner; lunch dishes (knives, perhaps forks and spoons) get washed at dinner time; campfire wine glasses get washed at breakfast. (That total does not include drinking water beyond the coffee, since we currently pack that separately. And we'll use ice-chest water to help with the fire-dousing). Granted, if we had unlimited water, we'd probably not be quite so frugal, but we vastly prefer isolated, dispersed camping to crowded campgrounds. We never overtly meter the water; if we ran out early, that mostly would mean either a trip to a campground or taking some dishes home to wash; but that has never happened.
Forty years of camping with a soap protocol and we've avoided the Tijuana Two-Step. And that includes fifteen years of backpacking, where the first wash of dishes was always with dirt: scrub them clean with dirt, then wash with a teaspoon of water and soap; after 30 seconds or so move the water and soap to the next dish and rinse with a tablespoon of water (which was reused).
Jon
