Laundry’s Languish

Here’s the result of me becoming immersed in writing the previous blogpost about some of Iowa’s wildlife (specifically, badgers and foxes). The clean laundry was forced to languish in a forlorn heap until such a time as I saw fit to commence folding. The situation provided a handy prompt for this blogpost’s subject, however. Who needs Plinky?

Sigh……laundry, laundry, you’ve been my almost daily companion for nearly as long as I can remember. My mother used a wringer washing machine, and when I became old enough to be trusted not to allow my hands and arms be squeezed through the tight rollers, doing the laundry became my weekly job on Saturday mornings. This may sound gross, but all week long our family simply tossed their soiled laundry down the basement steps where it grew into a mountain. On Saturdays, I would sort it by colors into piles, fill the washer and rinse tubs with water, and begin the washing procedure. Whites were washed first, of course, then successively the darker piles of clothes met their washing and rinsing fate. I’m not sure what my mom was doing during this time……fixing dinner or gardening or yacking on the phone, probably.

Doing laundry in a wringer washer set-up required much hands-on attention. After the clothes agitated in the wash tub for ten minutes or so, you fished the clothes out of the water (with a long wooden spoon if the water was really hot) and directed them into the rollers to be squeezed into the two tubs of rinse water, and then they were extruded through the roller again, to emerge as flat planks which dropped into a basket. Being cautious around the wringer rollers was crucial; I was acquainted with someone whose arm had once become trapped between the tight rollers……she had a lengthy, very conspicuous scar on her forearm as a permanent reminder. In warm, sunny weather I carried the wet laundry outdoors and pinned it on the clothesline. In winter, it was hung on lines in the basement and certain items were dried in the dryer, such as nicer shirts and blouses, and underwear and socks, which were just too numerous to fit on the clothesline. Remember, I did the whole week's worth of laundry on Saturday, so there was quite a large volume of it.

One reason I didn't mind doing laundry was that I could listen to my choice of music on the radio which sat on top of the dryer. Mom was upstairs or outdoors, too far away to notice. She didn’t care at all for the popular music of that time (the early 70's), even the tame fare I listened to, and would scowl in disapproval when strains of Chicago, or Boston, or Three Dog Night, or The Eagles, or America, or other such musical acts reached her ears (Now that style is "Easy Listening".) Being very sensitive to Mom’s frowns, I would flip the radio dial to the hymns on KNWS Christian radio when she was within earshot.

I used a wringer washer for the first few years of my married life, too. In truth, I loved doing laundry and hanging it outdoors. It was a most pleasant activity. Perhaps, deep down, it is my life’s vocation and everything else I do is just extra-curricular flimflam. Washing clothes may run in my bloodline…..my great-great-great-grandmother Mary Ann was a wash-woman in London. I assume that means she washed clothes, though I suppose it could have been dishes or floors, or something else. She also is said to have “told fortunes in the hand". Now, don’t gasp in shock and turn away, thinking she was an occultist. I believe, more than anything, she probably provided entertainment for people. Perhaps she was simply very observant and could ascertain deeper information about people. It was way back in the mid-1800’s……think about it……folks weren’t inundated with entertainment opportunities back then as we are nowadays. Honestly, I can't help it she's in my family tree; I'm impressed that she had enough gumption to leave England and come to America in the first place.

This next photo brings back pleasant memories of peaceful afternoons spent outdoors in the company of a small child just beginning to discover the world. This may be the only photo I have that shows the old outhouse privy that was in the backyard of the farmhouse we were renting at the time. An adorable little building it was, though not in use anymore as originally intended; I stored garden tools there.

That’s a basketful of clean cloth diapers in this next scene. The clothesline ran north and south, a fact I didn’t much care for because the breezes were usually from the south and the clothes would blow so that they wrapped tightly around the lines and ended up wrinkly instead of billowing outwards and drying nicely straight.

Let me take this opportunity to put in a plug for cloth diapers---though I'm quite sure they will never regain generalized popularity---CLOTH DIAPERS ROCK! I'm convinced that potty-training happens more quickly and easily when the child is wearing them. Think about it......a WET cloth diaper would feel pretty darn icky, while a Pamper or Huggies or whatever is touted as taking wetness comfortably away. Yeah.....the child cannot feel the wetness and so has less incentive to give up wearing the disposable diaper. He or she feels only the weight of the liquid in the disposable diaper. The child in the photo above was potty-trained by 24 months, and she basically did it on her own, because I had no idea how to do it in the first place. The child in the photo below was 3-1/2 years old before I could finally get her out of wearing Pampers and Huggies. Yes---sadly---I had succombed to using disposable diapers by then, due to an increase in the hecticness of my life; the older two children were in school and I was running around alot on their behalf.

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Goodness.....sorry to get sidetracked on that diaper tangent. Now back to laundry and clotheslines. When we moved to where we live now, I was happy to gain clotheslines that ran east and west, making more efficient use of the frequent southerly breezes.

Yes……I utilized my children as slave labor. They survived…somehow, just as I survived being my mom's slave. Just kidding. Heehee......chores are good for kids.