As I face my own dreaded pile of laundry, knowing it will take up a
good portion of my evening and probably part of the next day, I thought of a
fun bit of trivia to share. Okay, anything is better than shifting those piles
from floor to washer followed by moving to the dryer. Then as soon as the
buzzer sounds we must run immediately to hang or fold everything, because we
all know it will wrinkle in a matter of seconds or so it seems. We face that
detested chore as a time crunch. But what did people do in the west, or in most
of America, during 1800's?
Laundry doesn't seem to clean itself. The laundry fairies have refused
to come to my house since the day I married, and that happened to all those
gals back in the 1800's who left the comfort of the east and moved west. They
had to do their own laundry. And one of the first things they learned to do was keep whatever they were wearing as dry as possible. So before they tackled the wet, messy job, they reached between their feet to the back hem of the skirt. Grabbing the hem, they pulled it forward and up where they tucked it into their waistband..Then they might put their smock over it. That's not going to show in the advertisements because it wasn't very proper. and parts of their legs or ankles might show.
Since laundry swells daily, it needs equipment to keep it from
becoming out of hand and multiplying too quickly. In the 1800's, that meant a
laundry bat, a washboard, a tub, water, a fire to heat the water, and a bar of
soap. Clothes were shaken to remove any dirt that might fall away from them and
then they were dropped into the hot water and rubbed with a bar of soap before
being rubbed on the washboard, maybe with more soap. If you were lucky you
might have another tub to rinse them.
So what's the laundry bat used for and what is it? It's a stick that
is flattened on one end - think of a very short oar. It was used for plunging
the dirty laundry around in the very hot water and lifting the item out without
burning your hands. Think about those sheets and other large items. It was also
handy if the clothes were washed in the river or a pond. They could put those
filthy pants on a stone and beat them clean with the bat.
You washed the least dirty items and unmentionables first in the tub.
And those unmentionables were never hung in "public." Often they were
placed on a rope that was hung in the house. And you hoped that hubby never saw
them because a man, even a husband, should never see such things if you were
lady. You washed the dirtiest last, otherwise you'd be depositing more dirt on
the clothes then you were removing.
Monday became washday. It was a leftover tradition from Europe that
went back to Roman days where often the women got together on Monday in the town
square and at least tried to chat or have fun while doing this all-day chore.
And of course, it was source of pride to have clean laundry, and enviable if
yours was whitest.
Laundry soap became readily available in flakes around the time of the
Civil War. It was just soap that was flaked from a large block of soap and
packaged in boxes. But it was the names on the soap and the pretty pictures
that captured the attention of women. Blocks of soap still remained very
popular through the 1950's. Wouldn't it be nice to use soap with names like
Sunlight? Having a catchy name on laundry detergent is still important today.
And much like today, there were additives that could be placed either in the
soap or the water such as starch or bluing. Permanent press had not yet been
invented so they had to iron everything, and starch made everything look crispy
and nice when it was ironed. Bluing made the whites look whiter. Although going
back a few hundred years, they added a yellow color to the laundry soap to give
things a creamy look. Apparently that was more in vogue than white.
Even in the 1970's, I can remember adding starch to the rinse water of
my husband's shirts. Then instead of drying them, I would roll them up and
place them in the bottom of the refrigerator to be ironed the next day. Ugh!
What a chore.
Eventually women were lucky enough to get a new fangled tool called a
wringer. Oh what a treat! Now they could feed that laundry though the wringer
and get most of the soapy water out before going into the rinse water and then
the wringer could be placed on that tub and it would wring the water out so
that items could easily be hung. Of course, you didn't want your fingers caught
in that wringer, also called a mangle! Fingers might get broken or horrendously
squashed. You had to pay attention. Maybe that was easier to avoid when it was
hand cranked, but technology wasn't too far behind.
Actual washing machines began to crop up in the later 1800's. But the
earliest ones were hand cranked and were still in use through most of the
1900's anyplace where electricity didn't exist. But those city folks who had
electricity could also use a home-style washing machine that ran on electricity
- that I do remember. And I remember that the clothes had to be fed through the
rollers. A grandmother had one. I was fascinated with it because what we had at
home was a white metal box. And I remember my mom complaining when we were
lacking electricity because snow had taken the lines down, and if she had kept
her old washer, we could still wash clothes. That meant the chore would have
fallen on my dad - I think I know why he got rid of it.
