#vanlife .

Water.  Lots and lots of water.  That is what our usual kitchen clean entailed.  Fill a pot or basin with soapy water, wash everything up, then rinse with lots more water.  KOA suggest keeping a nice big pot with water on your fire for clean up.

As we traveled west we ran into two issues with this.  First was animal problems, especially bears.  Campgrounds did not want you just tossing that grey water at the edge of your campsite.  You needed to take to a dump sink or dump it in the pit toilet.  Yuck.

The second issue was the water itself.  Sure many camp site have lots of water.  But some had terrible tasting or looking water and others had no water.  Using up a few quarts of water to clean up was just crazy.

Our solution was to trade paper product for water.  Paper towels, a canister of wipes and spray bottle.

Our clean up

  • Start with finishing up all of your food.  Mr Ram will even lick his plate clean.
  • Use a papertowel to remove any leftover food or liquid.
  • Wipe with a cleaning towel.
  • Spray with water.
  • Wipe off with a paper towel.

We are less sustainable from a paper standpoint but we use very little water for cleaning, less than an ounce.

A couple of other things that help:

  • Drink water used to boil vegetables.  Think of it as watered down V8.
  • Swap that regular metal fry pan to a non stick one.  Sure there is talk that Teflon stuff may be harmful but it is very easy to clean up.