Washday Work and the Wonder of the Mangle

RUB A DUB, DUB…

Boiled - Soaked - Washed - Rinsed - Blued - Bleached - Starched - Hung - Dried- Dampened - Ironed - Folded - Stored. What is it? The laundry, of course! The laundry was done in the basement once a week, usually on Monday. You can imagine the amount of laundry we had for ten people. It was an all- day affair. We had a wringer-type washing machine. The white clothes and sheets were washed first in the hottest, soapiest water, then the colored clothes, and lastly, Daddy’s oily, greasy work clothes. Mom used Tide detergent from the earliest days until her death. The same water was used for the entire wash. There were two washtubs, one for the hot and one for the cold rinse water. The second rinse tub had bluing in it to make the clothes look ever whiter. Mom also added Borax to soften the water. The clothes were taken from the hot soapy water in the washing machine with the aid of a laundry stick and pushed through the wringer. You had to be careful not to get your fingers pinched between the two rollers on the machine. These rollers were on an arm that rotated around between the washing machine and the rinsing tubs. After the rollers squeezed the soap out of the clothes, they dropped into the hot rinse water, then they were wrung out again and dropped in the cold water, and finally, wrung dry as they fell into the clothesbasket. As the clothes were washed, Mom hauled the basketsful of wet clothes up the basement stairs and out to the clothesline. She didn’t need a gym to maintain her waistline; her many trips to and from the basement kept her fit. The laundry was hung outside to dry using wooden clothespins. In the winter, or if it rained, it was hung in the basement to dry. Those were long days because it took forever for the clothes to dry. Hanging the clothes on the lines was a real art. The sheets went on the outside lines to hide the underwear hanging on the inside lines. Each piece of laundry was arranged by size and shape. The sheets were hung together, socks hung together, and so forth. I can clearly see Mom bending to the laundry basket, shaking out one of my little dresses as she straightened her back and reached up to secure it to the line with the clothespins she held in her mouth. A clothes-prop was used to get the clotheslines higher to keep the line laden with wet clothes and bedding from drooping to the ground, and to take advantage of any light wind to help the clothes dry faster. After the sheets dried, they were immediately removed to make room for clothes washed later in the cycle. This went on all day long until all the clothes were washed and dried. The clothes were brought inside, some folded and put away, and some sprinkled with water and rolled up for ironing later on. One important part of doing the laundry was proclaiming how white it was, how crisp it felt, and how sweet it smelled. When Mom laid her tired body down on her bed on wash days she must have had a sense of accomplishment that she had done a good day’s work. The laundry was tucked away, and so were her kids—under nice clean sheets. One year, Grandpa Williams bought Mom a mangle to help her with the mounds of ironing there always was to do. It was a large cylindrical machine for pressing clothes and linens by means of a roller. The item to be pressed was laid on the round cloth-covered cylinder, which clamped shut against a curved heated metal shoe. The clothes turned on the cylinder and were ironed. We all thought this was a great invention and actually fought over whose turn it was to help “mangle” the clothes.