The image of a pioneer woman kneeling by a river scrubbing laundry on a washboard is one most of us can envision. How about a kettle of rainwater hanging from crossed poles over an open fire; a washerwoman stirring and lifting the clothes with a broomstick?
Keep in mind that women are still beating their meagre wardrobes on river rocks in underdeveloped parts of the world.
The history of doing laundry is recorded back to medieval
times. I did not know that laundry had so many historical aspects: manufacturing, employment, social status, drying, ironing, fabrics, dyes, starches, soaps and detergents. The domestic drudgery of doing laundry has evolved over time.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Monday was the traditional wash day, and Tuesday was for ironing. Equipment for wash day consisted of a washboard and homemade lye soap bars. Two galvanized metal washtubs, one for the wash water and one to rinse the clothes in, were used. When all was said and done, the wash water was used to wash the floor and rinse water was used to water plants.
Ladies put as many items of clothing to soak as would fit in the washtub. Running water was something they only imagined. They heated well or rainwater on a wood-stove and used cold water for rinsing. Clothes were wrung out by hand and hung on a clothesline to dry. When a wringer device that you clamped onto the side of a washtub was invented, it made that task a bit easier on the hands.
For the women of the time, like baking the best pie, laundry was also a competition. If you had your laundry done and hung out first on Monday morning or had the whitest whites, you were revered.
My grandma used a washtub and a board. When my parents were married in 1947, Mom used a crank wringer washer. One crank turned the washtub, and the other was for the wringer. She said she didn’t always wring the clothes completely out as "they dripped themselves dry or froze themselves out" on the clothesline.
Washboard
A washboard is a tool designed for hand washing clothes. Using the washboard was a physically gruelling task, but it was a step up from using a rock. Moving each item up and down on the rough surface of the washboard loosened dirt. Many knuckles were skinned and bruised as they wrapped over its ridges.
It’s wooden frame measured twenty-four inches high by twelve inches wide and was two inches thick. Initially, washboards were made entirely from wood, but these wore out with repeated use. Manufacturers switched the corrugated scrubbing insert and used other materials like tin, metal, plastic or glass.
A washboard could also be used as a musical instrument. With metal thimbles on your fingers, you held the board in front of you, tapping and strumming the corrugated area.
My grandmother lived in our house before us. One of the items that remained when we moved in was her washboard. On the top front, printed in black lettering, are the words The Kootenay Mountain Brand, Manufactured by Western Broom & Woodenware, Vancouver, BC.
Grandma's washboard has been sitting in our basement, collecting dust for almost forty years. I have looked at it many times but have never used it. I don’t know why I kept it, but I guess it was because it had something to teach me.
Water Resources
Not having running water growing up, I still take note of how much water I use. The image of my parents hauling pails of water in and out of the house year-round is a vivid one. It probably sticks in my mind so much because they did it every single day.
Doing laundry is still a tedious task. Today families wash huge mounds of clothes weekly. Mom claims that as a kid growing up in a large farm family in the 1930s and 1940s, they only changed their top clothing once a week. I commented that the men must have smelled pretty strong after a week. She didn’t recall them smelling bad as they all smelled the same.
When I was young, the first thing I did when I came home from school was change out of my good clothes into "everyday" attire. I got heck if I put certain items in the wash that were only worn once. Of course, as a child, I didn’t grasp how arduous doing laundry was for my mom.
Babies got a bath in the morning and as Mom calls it "a lick and a promise at night". The bathwater was then used to wash the cloth diapers.
In Canada, water is a resource that most of us take for granted. We use it freely to wash clothes and water gardens, for recreation, bathing, drinking and cooking. It is estimated that two billion people in the world experience severe stress from lack of water every day, while another four billion deal with water scarcity at certain times of the year.
Soap
Soap was expensive and difficult to obtain. Homemade lye soap was made by cooking a mixture of animal fat and lye. Lye was made by boiling wood ash in water, letting the ash settle and then skimming the lye liquid off the top to use in soap making. This liquid was caustic if it came in contact with the skin. They were eventually able to buy lye in a can.
When lye was mixed with the fat, a chemical reaction occurred that changed both substances. Once that reaction was complete, you no longer had fat or lye, you had created soap. The soap was then poured into shallow wooden boxes, and when it was set, it was cut into bars.
Pieces were shaved off a bar to make flakes that dissolved quicker in water. Soap flakes could eventually be purchased and were used until World War II, when powdered detergent was introduced. Laundry products are a massive industry today as every family in the industrialized world buys these products and uses them weekly.
Clothespins
Clothespins were first called dolly pegs or clothes pegs. Previous to the use of pegs, clothes were dried on lines, fences, lawns or hedges. The summer sun or winter frost helped to bleach yellowed white garments. Pegs with a rounded head were hand-carved out of a single piece of wood with a band added around the top for strength. Long idle winter months provided peg makers plenty of time to hone their craft. Pegs were sold or exchanged for other items.
Women would even sleep with a clothes peg on their nose in the hopes that their nose would eventually look thinner.
I was impressed that the inventor of the modern style clothespin, an accomplished violin player, thought up the spring-loaded design while playing the violin. I can't even play a musical instrument, let alone invent something while playing.
Women carried clothespins in their apron pockets. Two pegs were removed from the apron at a time. One was held between their teeth while they pinned a corner of the wet garment with the other pin. They also had to watch out for snakes while hanging laundry.
Ironing
Clothing was mainly made from cotton, wool and denim. Cotton garments and sheets wrinkled easily, so a sad iron was used. A sad iron was a heavy metal weight with a handle that was heated on a stove. Ironing was a miserable job as a sad iron was heavy, weighing five to nine pounds. In England they used the word sad to refer to something solid. This style of iron was replaced with versions of the electric irons we use today.
Starch
A starch mixture made out of flour and water was sprinkled on clothes before ironing. This was done to help items hold their shape.
Drying
My mom hung many loads of laundry on the long double clothesline in the yard. Although various models appeared since the 1940s, electric dryers only became widely used in the 1960s. I remember standing in the kitchen, watching when Mom got her first clothes dryer installed. I still use my grandparent’s wooden clothes drying rack with Grandpa’s name clearly printed on the side.
Employment
With every hardship comes opportunity. Supply and demand are what makes the world go around. A job as a washerwoman provided much-needed income for many families. People of a higher social status, travellers or single men often used this service.
The Dawning of a New Era
When the wringer washer was developed in the 1920s and sported an agitator and a wringer, it was something to behold. By the 1950s, most homes with running water had automatic washers.
Mom had eventually upgraded to an electric wringer washer and used it until they left the farm. Once her hand got caught in the wringer, by the time she got it out the skin on several of her fingers had been pulled off. She needed surgery to take skin grafts from her leg to repair her hand. It was quite an ordeal.
Doing laundry, once mainly a woman’s job, has evolved. Men of my dad’s generation would’ve never been caught doing laundry. Today the most significant increase in men doing laundry is in the 18 to 34 age range.
The next time I feel put upon having to change the laundry, I’ll remind myself of grandma’s washboard. It reminds us that things are not always easy and that life remains difficult for many people in this world but there is always a way to get something done.
Monday - Wash Day!
Tuesday - Ironing!
Wednesday – Marketing!
Thursday – Cleaning!
Friday – Bake Day!
Saturday – Fun Day!
Sunday – Rest Day!
Everybody happy?
Well, I should say!
Excuse me, I am going to hug my washing machine.
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Thank you,
Norma
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