Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 111 - 41: New Year’s Eve_3

Especially the white clothes, which, after years of use, have turned into a mottled gray-brown color.

The cuffs, collars, and elbows, these "disaster areas," have even turned black, and even soaking in hot water can't wash out the accumulated dirt between the fibers.

Cleaning supplies are one of Chen Zhou's pain points in living on the island.

But compared to other difficult problems, the lack of soap, laundry detergent, or shampoo is only a minor issue.

What he always needs most are modern tools, resources, or practical knowledge.

For example, when he went to the beach yesterday, if he had a South Pacific mollusk atlas, his New Year's Eve dinner wouldn't have been so shabby.

"Knowledge is power." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Since arriving on the island, Chen Zhou increasingly feels that this saying is true.

However, besides this saying, another one also deeply impressed him—"A clever woman cannot cook a meal without rice."

Putting the dirty clothes into a wooden tub to soak, he returned to the house to find a clean set of clothes to put on. Although he should have continued to rest, Chen Zhou felt little sleepiness.

Late at night, with dim lighting, going out to work necessary to carry an oil lamp.

Chen Zhou had to tidy up the dishes in the house, placed the gold coin he found next to the bed, picked up the bird bones on the table, and put them in an empty wooden box, preparing to dump them in the toilet for composting when the sun rises.

After washing the dishes and tidying the table, he also washed the clothes and hung them up to dry.

The more he worked, the more energetic he became. As the sky got brighter, Chen Zhou estimated he probably wouldn't have the chance to go back to sleep and had to continue working.

The amount of fine flour was limited, and aside from making dumplings last night, he had only used a bit to make lumps while on the boat.

Breakfast was the old recipe—flatbread with leftovers, mixed with some heavily fishy cold kelp salad.

He ate over a pound of dumplings last night and wasn't very hungry in the morning, not even finishing one flatbread.

Xiao Huihui and the chinchilla were the same, one sleeping sweetly on the bed, the other in the box.

After picking out some bird meat for Lai Fu, Chen Zhou wrapped the remaining kelp in salt and hung it on a wooden rack to dry.

The kelp tasted good, and it supplemented iodine, helping him absorb calcium from goat milk, and was convenient to store. He planned to add it to his daily meals, and in the future, set aside a day to collect and dry kelp.

After making sure the kelp was securely hung and wouldn't fall, Chen Zhou went to the cave platform.

The temperature during the dry season is high, above 30 degrees Celsius every day, and even though the cave is on a shady slope, the hot climate hasn't eased much.

Due to the high temperature, the stone walls built on December 28th have completely dried, and cracks have even appeared in the mud-plastered surfaces.

He lifted the long-handled axe, hammer face forward, preparing to test the strength of these stone walls and see if any of the soils he painstakingly collected were usable.

There were five stone walls built on December 28, comprised of sun slope yellow soil, sun slope white soil, sun slope gray soil, and forest soil.

Once the walls dried, the differences in soil quality were visible from the outside.

Sun slope yellow soil cracked the most severely;

Sun slope white soil crumbled a bit, but overall, it was relatively intact and tightly bonded;

The gray soil's structure was the loosest; stones in the wall built with it could be pulled out by hand without hammering, and it was immediately discarded.

Forest soil lacked adhesion, similar to sun slope white soil, but didn't set as well as the white soil, so Chen Zhou decided to give it another chance.

After observing each, he gained a general understanding of the stone walls' strength.

Raising the hammer, Chen Zhou commenced the actual strength testing.