Washday Blues

Laundry, there is just no way to get away from it. Sooner or later clothes and other household items need cleaning. That means sorting dirty duds into piles before putting them in a machine with soap and waiting for the last spin cycle before hanging them to dry or sticking them in the drier. I can think of better uses of my time. But we have it easy compared to many in our present world and to the majority of people the further back in history that we go.

Washing was usually a task relegated to women although there were exceptions such as Chinese houseboys or the entrepreneurs who made money off the men who flocked to gold rushes. Those speculators needed clean clothes too.

The women who settled in the North American bush would have had no access to running water in their houses which made laundry an even more daunting task. No wonder people then didn't wash their clothes as much as we do today. Soap was not something bought at the store but a commodity made by the housewife and hot water was not an easy thing to come by either.

As towns sprang up commercial laundries became available. Many a housewife must have been tempted to part with a few coins to get away from the washday blues.  Of course, the better off members of society would have had servants to take care of their laundry. When touring through larger historic houses you will often find a room dedicated to household laundry. Being the laundress for a large household must have been a thankless and never-ending task.

There was some relief in sight, in the later half of the 19th century city water became available as did washing powder. That improved some parts of the chore. New machinery to help with some of the heavier tasks that washdays required were invented and water tanks that were attached to the kitchen stove provided a steady source of hot water for bathing and laundry.

That might sound like a great improvement over heating water on the stove for those uses but it had its draw backs. I can remember one old house that we lived in which had an oil stove in the kitchen which heated the hot water in a tank in the bathroom. Hot water became scarce in the summer when temperatures soared as oil stoves throw off a lot of heat. Some of the machinery was not all that safe,  either. It was heavy and sometimes too fast for small fingers or even arms. Another memory I have is of having a healthy respect for my gran's wringer washer. It was capable of wringing more than cloth!

My grandmother's wringer washer was powered by electricity. That was another improvement that took care of some of the grunt work. Previous machines had still required man or woman power to manipulate the moving parts. Electricity made washing easier but laundry still had to be hung to dry until driers became a regular part of household equipment. In most households that didn't happen until the later half of the 20th century.

While laundry is not one of my favourite chores at least it is not the time-consuming event it used to be in the past. I can hear the washer and drier working away as I sit here at my computer. Not that hard to take really.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer 

Neering, Rosemary. The Canadian Housewife: An Affectionate History. Whitecap Books, North Vancouver, 2005.