Have you hugged your washing machine today? Hmm?

[Yaps]

Washing Clothes Recipe (Given a Young Bride By Her Grandmother)

Years ago a Kentucky grandmother gave the new bride the following
recipe: This is an exact copy as written and found in an old scrapbook - with
spelling errors and all.

WASHING CLOTHES

Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water. Set tubs so smoke
wont blow in eyes if wind is pert. Shave one hole cake of lie soap in boilin water.

Sort things, make 3 piles

1 pile white,
1 pile colored,
1 pile work britches and rags.

To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth, then thin down with
boiling water.

Take white things, rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard, and boil, then
Rub colored don't boil just wrench and starch.

Take things out of kettle with broom stick handle, then wrench, and
starch.

Hang old rags on fence.

Spread tea towels on grass.

Pore wrench water in flower bed. Scrub porch with hot soapy water. Turn
Tubs upside down.

Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, sit
And rock a spell and count your blessings.

 

[Mary]

I give mine a kiss everyday! I well remember my newlywed days when I had to haul laundry to a laundromat. And I considered THAT a hardship!

 

[hensylee]

mother actually did that stuff - but I don't think she had time for a cup of tea.

I had to hang clothes on the line to dry. Then the marvelous AUTOMATIC WASHER and then the dryer came along. Beginning of all the changes for us ladies. We all went to work after that.

 

[geebee]

I remember the old washer with the thingy on top you put the clothes in and cranked and the clothes were sqeezed to get the excess water out. It was a washer that danced across the floor when Mom washed the bigger items.

Then we hauled them up the cellar door (the kind that was flat on a raised area outside our back door) and to the back yard where we hung them on the line using the push on clothespins. I remember the excitement when we got the clothespins that had the spring clasp.

I think I was 14 or so before we had a dryer - major life changing event.

Sounds really old fashioned to me now but, compared to the broomstick method, it was a little heaven on earth.

 

[catwoman]

My husband & I depended on solar power from 1980 to 1996 -- an umbrella clothes line and other than the extra work involved, I really liked drying our clothes on a clothes line. When we moved into our first home in December 1980, it had a floor furnace and no window units (and we're talking TEXAS!!!!!), garbage disposal or dishwasher. We made do with 2 window units for a 1,000SF home and two years later did some remodeling, put in central heat-air, installed a Kitchenaid dishwasher & a disposal, etc., etc. But we made do with our clothesline....

Then, finally, we built a large home that had a full-fledged laundry room. I miss the clean smell on freshly dried clothing, but I wouldn't give up being able to dry laundry during a rainstorm!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bvdr]

My first washing machine was one of the wringer types and I had to use the double wash tubs in the basement. You had to wring out the clothes after washing and then pump the water into one of the tubs and then pump the rinse water from the other tub into the washing machine, put the rung out clothes into the rinse water, agitate them again for a while, pull them out one at a time out of the rinse water and feed them through the ringer again. Diapers of course needed to be put through two seperate rinses so the soap would be all out. I didn't have a dryer. I would hang everything outside in the summer and on lines in the basement in the winter. My hands were forever red and irritated. It was a lot of work.

I think I will go hug my washer and dryer.

 

[Georgia]

I still hang my bedding on the line when the weather's good. There's nothing finer than that smell of line-dried sheets.

And I wouldn't give up my washer and dryer for anything. I like having line-drying being a luxury.

 

[Abbanabba]

I have memories of boiling the copper to wash the clothes, then we upgraded to an old "mangle" machine (where you squeezed out the water between two hand cranked rollers) then years later we got a twin tub.... all of which are now dreadfully archaic in these modern times.

I've now got a lovely little front loader washer and a 9kg dryer - which I LOVE!!!! No more bug sh*t, or smoke from neighbouring fireplaces, or spiders on my clean washing. I hang or fold it straight from the dryer and 9 times out of 10 I don't even have to iron! Whoo-hoo!!!

It's just a shame we don't have anywhere to put our dishwasher. God how I miss it!!


A : )

 

[rottrod]

I still hang clothes and especially the sheets on a clothesline. Nothing smells better. However I always remember having a washing machine, but no dryer until I was 10 or 11. My grandma still made her own lye laundry soap until she died in the late 70's.

I wonder now what we did before we had personal computers!!

 

[hensylee]

we wrote real actual letters, read the newspaper, listened to the radio and talked with our neighbors...................!