Sheets Blowing on the Line

I do laundry with a push of a button, washer and dryer, after checking settings. Naturally, that doesn’t include pulling items out of the dryer, one at a time, and folding, but I’m not talking about folding clothes here. My mother was the only person I ever knew who not only didn’t mind laundry, but enjoyed it, including folding the finished product, and tucking into drawers and shelves.

So, why am I telling you about laundry? Well, for a start, our more than 20-year-old Whirlpool finally stopped spinning water out of clothes, so we ordered another low-end Whirlpool and had it delivered.

A wonder machine. Even the water levels are automatically sensed, a terrific idea with teens in the house who think that another armful can still be shoved in to make one load instead of admitting to Procrastination Mountain.

It wasn’t always this easy.

Mom taught me how to do laundry, years ago when we lived in the Heights. She explained about separating whites from colors from darks, how to fold fitted sheets (and yes, she could do it beautifully), and how to hang clothes on the line with the minimum of space and clothespins.

She even taught me to use a wringer washer.

I’m not sure if our wringer was a Speed Queen or a Maytag, but huge piles of laundry could be washed in less time than one complete cycle of washer to dryer to dresser takes now. She made it look easy, but I was less confident.

The wringer was a beast waiting to smash fingers and snap buttons. It was obvious the occasions I did laundry, because at the last seconds, buttons stood to face their doom and snapped in half as they ran through the wringer. (It never occurred to me to wash shirts inside out and prevent that, probably because Mom didn’t need to resort to tricks.)

Clothes hung on the line in the Michigan wind, and were gathered into clothes baskets, fresh and fragrant.

Except for wintertime when you pulled them down and cracked them in an effort to fold.

When our daughter was in diapers, we bought a house on Henrydale Street, and needed a washer and dryer. “We can only afford one,” Dave said. “Which?” I thought about hanging clothes in the wintertime and chose the dryer, which meant that we inherited Mom’s wringer washer.

Fun at first. I sang the praises of wringer washers as I sorted clothes on the concrete basement floor, and put Anne in a walker to scoot around the floor while I swished, wrung, rinsed, and gave the final wring to the loads. We had clotheslines across the basement as well as in the backyard, in case of rain, and all went well.

Until the arm of the wringer wouldn’t stay tight no matter how many adjustments were made.

One night, the arm swung wildly, round and round, and the washer started its angry invasion of the basement, held back only by the electrical cord. Little Anne froze in her walker, out of reach, mouth and eyes wide, while I darted around the blasted thing trying to reach the plug.

We bought a regular washer after that.

Still, there’s a happy memory of clothes hanging in the backyard, flapping in the breeze, blue jeans dancing in place, (and all underwear in plain view of inquisitive neighbors. Didn’t occur to me at the time that they had laundry days, too). I can still see my youngest brother standing with his favorite blanket on the line, thumb in mouth, waiting for it to dry.

And Mom filling the wringer tub with hot water for whites, cold water to rinse, and baskets ready to catch the final loads.

No, it didn’t always run smoothly. The first year of the earwig invasion, I reached into the clothespin bag and moving legs swirled around my hands. The buggers had set up quick housekeeping in the bag. Dave set it on fire.

Wooden clothespins were best, since the plastic ones tended to snap in half or break off. Most cotton clothes needed to be ironed, another task that Mom enjoyed, though I didn’t share her enthusiasm.

So many items are colorfast now that I’m not always careful separating whites and lights from colors. I miss my clothesline for jeans and 100% cotton tops, but don’t know where my ironing board is.

The whole magic of easy laundering struck me on our tour with Tyson Brown to see files and pictures and items owned by the Auburn Heights Historical Society from early farms and settlers. I was fascinated with a manual Horton Globe wooden washer where a handle was turned to swish the clothes, and with a separate wringer. Laundry could not have been a pleasant or easy task with those. Yes, they were an improvement over scrubbing clothes against a washboard, but filling and emptying the tub, hauling out heavy wet laundry to feed into the wringer? Those housewives would have thought Mom’s wringer a gift from the angels.

A reminder that the good-old-days in the 1800’s and early 1900’s required much more labor than I appreciate for routine chores. Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, churn on Thursday, clean on Friday, bake on Saturday?

I doubt even Mom would have enjoyed laundry then.