All with a Bar of Soap

“Grace, where’s the dish soap?  There’s only hand soap here.”

“Oh you can use it!”

“The hand soap…?”

“Yeah.  It works.”

In my household in Ghana, soap is soap.  You use the same bar of soap for washing dishes, doing laundry, washing yourself, mopping the floor and anything else that needs to be cleaned.  At first, this was very confusing to me.  I knew from experience that if you used laundry detergent in the dishwasher, it makes a mess.  I guess specialty soap only applies to machines, because it’s been a good eight months now and everything is still pretty clean.

Dishes:  The soap should be placed in a cup with a wet sponge rag.  Rinse the dish with water, rub the sponge rag on the soap and scrub the dish.  Rinse all the soap off, dry the dish and put it away.

My host sister doing her washing

Laundry:  Fill one bucket halfway with water (Bucket 1) and another ¾ full (Bucket 2).  Put the clothes in Bucket 1 and move them around until they’re nice and soaked.  Drop the bar of soap in the same bucket and move the clothes around again until the water’s a little sudsy.  Find the bar of soap and the first thing you want to wash.  Rub the soap on the dirtiest areas and main surface areas.  Put the soap back in the bucket.  Clenching the material in both hands, rub vigorously.  Do this until the whole clothing item is clean.  Then ring it out, and place it in Bucket 2.  Bucket 2 is for rinsing.  After washing everything else, rinse everything.  If you want, empty Bucket 1 and use it as a second rinse bucket.  After you rinse everything, ring it out and hang it on the line.

Mopping the Floor: Put the bar of soap in a bucket and fill it with water.  Stir it around with the mop until the water gets sudsy.  Mop away!

I feel like everything is pretty clean still.  I’ll probably have a major adjustment to make when I can’t use one kind of soap for everything back in the States.  Oh well.