I realised it's Monday and I'm doing some washing.
My gran always did her washing on a Monday but whereas for me it's a 'stick it in the machine' job for her it took a whole day.
First she'd have to get her water boiler thing - I can't remember what it's called - heated up and then scrub the clothes before rinsing and putting through the mangle in the back yard, and hanging them on the line.
There were five of us living in the house - me, my mum, my grandparents, and my gran's mum - so there would be quite a bit of washing to be done, so the sequence would be repeated a few times.
I hated being ill on a Monday because the back door would be open and the house would be cold and damp and steamy. Which makes it sound as if I were often ill, and I don't think I was. It's just that particular memory sticks with me.
Which reminds me: I'd better go and see if the first lot of washing is done so I can put in the next lot. I don't think it will be going on the line today. It's grey and cold without even a breeze.
8 comments:
Sounds like ny mom. She had a poss stick to agitate the clothes. It was terribly hard work and took all day. Meals were usually something like han and egg pie, which people now think of as fancy quiche, on washing day. She considered that simple quick cooking! And I remember the steam and the doors open. Her mangle had huge wooden rollers, big iron contraption in the shed off the lean-to kitchen. Laundry for nine people.
Good old days, not!
When I was a baby 65 years ago, my mother had to do all the laundry (including my diapers) with a scrub board and tub of hot water she drew from a well and heated on the stove. My parents were so poor, they lived in a three-room house without running water or indoor plumbing and could not afford a washing machine. They DID have electricity in the house, however. That's where my mother drew the line. My father had wanted to buy an even worse shack without electricity too. Man oh man, I cannot even imagine how hard her life was.
I have memories of my grandmother and the old wringer washer which was always going. Granda was a fisherman and you can imagine the clothes she washed every day! A lot harder to do than it is today! We don’t use our clothesline this time of year. It’s just too cold.
For the first few years of my life (1938-1942), I'm pretty sure that my parents had no washing machine. Wash day was made lighter, however, by my mother's taking us kids with her to our grandmother's house where four generations of women worked at their common task while enjoying companionship. Either of my grandmother's homesteads included a separate wash house, meaning that hot water was hauled from the kitchen stove (oil-burning at paternal grandmother's, wood-burning at maternal grandmother's). They were fortunate enough to have electricity (wired by my father, at his mother's) and electrical agitator/wringer washers. First, all the "whites" were washed, put through the wringer into the first rinse water, then through the wringer again into the final rinse water, and put through a final pass of the wringer into the basket to be carried to the wash lines. While the "whites" were further processed, the "coloreds" were started in the washing machine. The last load was the denim overalls. Hunky Husband thinks nothing of throwing a load into our modern washing machine, letting it process while he goes to his den, across the hallway, to work/play on the internet. Times have changed a bit.
P.S. During the last half of 1942 and first couple of months of 1943, we lived in a house built by my father on the bed of his flatbed Ford truck. We had a galvanized tub that served as our bathtub and as our washing tub. It would make a good tale if I could tell how my mother became confused and scrubbed us kids on a washboard, but she wasn't that silly; )
I do remember my aunt having a roller-wringer type washer. It lived on her back porch, water from the hose (fed by the creek on the property), it did agitate with electricity but then each piece was pulled out and manually put through a wringer to get the water out. I got the help with turning the wringer handle when I was small which I thought was loads of fun.
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