So I spent a long day washing not only all that flat stuff but also all of our clothes we'd used for 7 days. Terry had rigged me a little clothesline out back and I decided to hang all the towels and sheets outdoors. I'm a nut about clotheslines and air-dried clothes. The smell is heaven!! All of this enjoyment really took me back to my childhood and laundry day.
I remember my Grandmother doing laundry out doors with a wringer washer. Hers was a handcrank one. She also had a couple of rinse tubs. She'd let the clothes agitate. then pull them from the water, sort of fold them and slip the edge of the clothing to the rollers and while cranking run it through and that would squeeze the water out. A far advance from wringing everything by hand. sometimes she'd still wring the majority out before putting it through the wringer. That gives new meaning to a person being "put through the wringer". Every family has tales of someone that got an arm caught and damaged. Maybe broken. Especially when the new electric wringers came out and the only way it could be stopped was to turn it off. Terry had a cousin that ended up really injured. What child can resist, poking and touching, turning rolling pins?
In Alaska, probably 1948 or so, we moved into a new house and got a new fangled washer called the Easy Spindrier. It's main headline on getting you to buy it was bold letters...NO WRINGER! I was so far gone in my memory lane walk that I looked up one of their ads. You could roll it into the kitchen and hook it up to your kitchen sink! one part of the ad read...Wash Faster, safer, cleaner in Tub #1 the other part of the ad read...Rinse and Spin clothes damp-dry in Tub #2
We didn't have to roll it to the kitchen as my Dad had a Laundry sink put in and a little room for the furnace, broom closet and the Easy Spindrier. I was only about 10 or so but I remember how excited and happy my Mother was with this new machine. I was fascinated with how it worked. My Mother being very smart and taking advantage of my interest taught me how to use the Easy Spindrier and I was suddenly all grown up and became the family laundress and that included hanging the clothes (in a very precise way), taking them down, folding them. Eventually learning to starch, sprinkle and iron. For some crazy reason....I loved it!!
True, laundry day took a few Saturday hours but it was always 4 loads. White, lights, mediums and darks. Inspected by my Mother to make sure there was no color mixing! In the winter the clothes would freeze on the clothesline and then I'd bring them in and lay them on racks lined up throughout the kitchen etc. Eventually my Dad got some sort of a little room/shed from someplace and rigged up a little heater and hung clotheslines. My Mother was thrilled! so was I! We hauled the wet clothes from the house to the "drying room" during winter or rain storms and it was so wonderful to enjoy that!
When we eventually moved to the new big house on Turnagain bluff in 1953, technology, in it's attempt to give women more free time on laundry day, had a machine that you could toss the clothes in, add soap, clothes the door and eventually the clothes would come out clean and dry! This was not a top loader and neither my Mother or I could possible understand how anything could get clean without an agitator. We sat in front of this fancy combo unit, Mother with the instruction book, and me with great interest in observing how would this work on the first cycle. We were fascinated.
We talked about what a time saver this would be. How convenient. How you could wash throughout the week. How laundry didn't have to stack up even though we'd never had that problem. Truth be told though....no one had tons of clothes. Everything was very practical for all of us.
So were did things go cock-eyed? Why do we have laundry rooms stacked with dirty clothes? Why haven't the new-fangled ideas, these modern gadgets, these time saving pieces of equipment lessened our work load? Laundry is now so much more complex and overwhelming with the sheer bulk of it than it ever was when I did the four loads of laundry, for a family of 4, weekly. Timewise it was a blink of an eye compared to now! All of us will lament that we have stacks of laundry to do.
I guess one answer could be that we are living in the age of affluence, the age of entitlement, the age of super abundance. The age where today's hot buy, top fashion pick, is outdated before it's been worn twice much less worn out!! And the prices that are so inexpensive on so many things!!
I wish for each of you a clothesline! let your children do their own laundry and hang it out to dry, gather it in, fold it and put it away! I spent a lot of dreamy pondering moments doing laundry and I still enjoy it. (another story for another time was lack of water in Alaska!! and me trying to do laundry!! Yikesters!!)
Ooops! am I on my soapbox? seems appropriate with talk of laundry, don't you think?
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The Elbow-Grease Factor: How to Teach Your Children to Love Work
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