Friday was laundry day a the King-Cromartie House, one of the historic buildings in the Himmarshee Village.
It doesn't look like all the much, does it? So why all those washtubs?
If you're an apartment dweller, you have to walk it down to a laundry room, or haul it to a laundromat. But most of us toss a load into the machine when we run out of undies. Maybe we start the machine during dinner. It fills up, soaks everything, agitates them for a while, replaces the dirty soapy water with fresh, rinses everything, and then spins all the excess moisture.
We dump it into the dryer and fold it while watching the evening news. Time for a single load; maybe an hour and a half, more or less.
But back in the day, laundry was an all-day affair.
You'd have to heat the water on your wood or coal-burning stove, and pour it over your clothes in a washtub, pour in some lye, and agitate the mess with a plunger. Then you'd scrub them on a washboard. You know, those things sometimes used in folk music.
Then you'd transfer them into a washtub of plain water. Maybe you'd need to do this a couple of times to get the lye out, and believe me, you really want to get all the lye out.
Then you hang the clothes out to dry. Depending on the weather, the cloth, and how well you managed to squeeze all the weather, they'd be dry in a few hours.
And then you'd iron them, but that's a story for another time.
It doesn't look like all the much, does it? So why all those washtubs?
If you're an apartment dweller, you have to walk it down to a laundry room, or haul it to a laundromat. But most of us toss a load into the machine when we run out of undies. Maybe we start the machine during dinner. It fills up, soaks everything, agitates them for a while, replaces the dirty soapy water with fresh, rinses everything, and then spins all the excess moisture.
We dump it into the dryer and fold it while watching the evening news. Time for a single load; maybe an hour and a half, more or less.
But back in the day, laundry was an all-day affair.
You'd have to heat the water on your wood or coal-burning stove, and pour it over your clothes in a washtub, pour in some lye, and agitate the mess with a plunger. Then you'd scrub them on a washboard. You know, those things sometimes used in folk music.
Then you'd transfer them into a washtub of plain water. Maybe you'd need to do this a couple of times to get the lye out, and believe me, you really want to get all the lye out.
Then you hang the clothes out to dry. Depending on the weather, the cloth, and how well you managed to squeeze all the weather, they'd be dry in a few hours.
And then you'd iron them, but that's a story for another time.
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