Laundry in Mongolia is a laborious weekly or twice weekly activity that involves getting water from the well, heating water on the stove, hand scrubbing every thing, rinsing everything, and then hanging it up to dry for 12-24 hours, depending on how dry/cold the day is.

If you look at the picture above you can see how the process unfolds. I take clothes from the dirty pile, scrub them with powered Tide and a bar of lye soap (yellow thing on top of the clothes) in the purple bucket, and then deposit them in the green bucket. Once I am done I empty the very dirty water (see Brian’s shirt as an example of what I am cleaning)

into the blue bucket, and then repeat the process with clean water to rinse out the soap. One of the hardest parts of the job is wringing everything out by hand.

Once everything is washed I either hang the clothes on an indoor rack that we borrow from Darkhuu or on the line outside.

Here I am hanging up the laundry:

Note carefully the steam coming off the clothes due to the very cold air temperature. In the winter the clothes freeze solid in a matter of minutes and then the moisture sublimates off of them.

When it gets dark out, we bring our clothes in and either fold them and put them away or hang them on the rack to finish drying. As you can see, cold weather can make for some strange laundry.

And that is how one does laundry with no power or running water.