"Wash on Monday..."

Monday’s a good day to do laundry. The family has been busy doing things together over the weekend. They probably were getting their clothes extra dirty either playing or working together on Saturday. Of course, everyone takes a bath on Saturday night, and that makes an extra load of towels and washcloths. On Sunday, you may have company over for dinner, and you’ll have to wash the tablecloth afterwards, plus all the extra napkins. So, by Monday, there’s plenty of laundry to do.

My first memory of laundry was a hired girl scrubbing our clothes on a washboard in the Bahamas. I had a toy washboard and rubbed my doll clothes right next to her. I even had a little clothesline with tiny clothespins. I’m sure it wasn’t as much fun for her as it was for me. She had to draw water from a well and use harsh soap. I know that she could wring sheets so dry that they hardly had to be hung on the line.

My Aunt Ruth had a wringer washer that ran off a generator. I thought it was a fabulous invention. After my cousin caught her had in the rollers, we weren’t allowed to help.

My father tried to make a hand powered washer for my mother. It looked like box with two plungers that moved up and down with a long handle. **SMILE** It didn’t work and we used it as a boat for a week or so.

I like my washing machine. We’ve gone through a few with our big family. If the days were sunny, we hung our clothes on a line. I even made a lower one for the little kids to hang socks or wash cloths on it. I enjoyed hanging out diapers. They looked so white and smelled so sweet after being in the sunshine all day.

When it was rainy, the drier seemed to running for all day. We also used a folding wooden rack. I wonder when those were invented? I expect the colonist dried clothes in front of their fireplaces on rainy days. Did they sniff their clean sheets with delight?

There were ALWAYS clothes to fold and a basketful of unmatched socks! I’d pay anyone money to match socks. My price went from 2 cents/ pair to 10 cents/ pair as they got older and smarter.

As my kids got older, they began doing their own laundry. They didn’t want their socks or T-shirts going into someone else’s pile. Sometimes, the washer complained of the compacted heavy loads of some who stuffed a week’s worth in at once.

So what do you do on Mondays?