Growing up in the late forties and the fifties, one thing never changed. Women always washed clothes on Monday's.
It was an all day affair back then because women washed with the wringer washer and hardly any one had clothes dryers back then so hanging out the clothes to dry was the thing to do. The washing machine of today was years into the future.
Washing clothes in a wringer washer was to put it simply, a job. You just didn't put dirty clothes in the tub and leave it be. No, you put the clothes in one at a time in a tub filled with hot sudsy soap. You let the machine agitate the clothes for awhile, then stopped the machine to take out clothing one piece at a time to hand feed each piece through the wringer. After the clothes rung out of the wringer they fell into the connecting tub full of cold clear water where they agitated back and forth to release any left over soapy film. Some people did a double rinse and that included my dad.
There were so many different brands of soap back then. Soap for whitening, for bleaching, for baby diapers. I remember my dad pouring white crystals into the water, and then like magic the water would turn like a blue sky on a summer day. I asked my dad what this did and he told me it makes the whites whiter. I was befuddled so I asked him why the flakes turned the water blue if it was to whiten clothes. He said it was a special formula that the company made.
Today I hardly see any of those products on the shelves, I guess they are all in the one box or bottle, but somehow my clothes never seem to get as white as my dad got the clothes,
All the clothes and sheets got hung out to dry in the nice weather, if it rained or in the winter they were hung in the basement.
Today we have dryers to dry our clothes, but no way do the clothes or sheets have the smell as when hung outside. I still like to hang sheets outside. Nothing like getting into bed with the fresh smell of the outside,
A little bit more of my memoirs,
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