Removing sand with a bucket and plunger

Clean Cloth Nappies admin Jes describes how to remove sand and grit from clothing using a bucket and plunger.

Summer in our house means outdoor play, and with outdoor play comes dirt and grit. My son loves sand. He comes home from daycare with a bag of sandy clothes most days and on the weekends we’re often running around at the beach or in the garden which means even more sand and dirt. 

As much as my son loves grit, my washing machine does not. I’ve had to remove the door of my washing machine after sand from my son’s clothing wedged itself in the seal. Sand can also quickly destroy the pump in your washing machine. Your best bet is to remove sand from clothing before the wash cycle.

Just like sandpaper, sand texture, particle size and coarseness vary. The sand at our favourite beach tends to be on the courser end with lots of extra edges that grips tightly on to fabric threads and can be tricky to get off.

I don’t know if you have ever tried rinsing sand out of clothes but it is tedious and really hard. I used to hang clothes over the fence and hose it but it felt like a massive waste of water and I still ended up with sand embedded in the clothing albeit a bit less than it started with.

After hand-washing cloth nappies for five days during a power cut, I wondered: Why not use the same methods to remove sand from my son’s clothes? 

I used a drill and a milk powder mixer during the power cut. This worked well for nappies, so I tried it out on the sandy clothes.  

Sadly, this did not achieve the results I wanted. The single-layer cotton and stretch jersey got tangled around the bit and proceeded to stretch and snag. Not a great result for the clothes or my morale but I wasn’t defeated so it was back to the drawing board. This was where the old plunger in a bucket popped back up. 

Bucket and plunger hand washing

It’s simple and you only need four items to get started:

• A bucket, ideally with a lid to contain the sloshing
• Plunger 
• Water, enough to fill around one-third (⅓) to one-half (½) of the bucket
• A small amount of your preferred detergent

If your bucket has a lid, cut a hole in the lid about three times the diameter of the plunger handle. This will allow you to contain as much of the sloshing as possible without compromising the plunger’s movement and momentum.

Simply pop the clothes in the bucket, and add the water, detergent and plunger. If you have a lid then pop that over the top and get that elbow grease going.

It’s important to keep the plunger over the top of the clothes, this prevents it from sticking to the bottom of the bucket which will reduce the agitation. The more aggressive you can get with the plunger, the more agitation and therefore soiling removed.

I found three to five minutes is more than enough to loosen the sand. This lifts the chunky grains of sand that can damage your machine. The clothes won’t be completely clean, so follow this with a cycle in the washing machine to remove stains and soiling.

Final thoughts

Don’t let the challenges of sand and dirt stop you and your little ones from enjoying the great outdoors, a bucket and plunger can take the stress away and the best part? It can be applied to many situations you may find yourself in during the summer:

• Camping with no access to a washing machine
• Sand or dirt
• Water restrictions

I know this summer my $5 plunger is going to earn its keep and my washing machine will avoid an unwelcome pump replacement, bring on the summer and the sandy bums my son loves so much.