Lately as I load my washer or my dryer I reflect on the ease with which I can perform this task. After sorting I throw a batch into the washer, add some detergent and any additional stuff that the load might warrant. Shut it, twist and poke a few dials or lights---and go about my business, wherever that might take me. In an hour, give or take, the machine gives a few beeps to alert me that it has completed all the cycles and awaits my leisure to remove the contents, with the drying as the next step. It may be hours before I respond and move on.
What a wonder this is!! I don't have to go very far back in my ancestry to see huge changes. Actually, I don't even need to go back at all, because I started my married life in a farm house that had a twin tub washer, wringers attached. But even those were a far cry from the days of my grandmothers' days for laundry. Wash tubs, bluing, heating water for the tubs, scrub boards, making their own soap (another long process in itself), wringing clothes by hand, hanging it all on the clothes lines with clothes pins, and likely I have skipped a few things that were needed because I have no literal experience.
The choices of detergent, softener, additives are endless now. Each product promising wonderful results. A person doesn't even have to estimate the amount of detergent, or whatever, needed, it can all come in a nice little cake that does more than one thing to give lovely laundry.
A few things have remained the same. The laundry does not sort itself, still a manual job. The rules still apply that if one tries to combine white clothes with colored clothes, they will not remain white. And linty things don't mix well with others. There still has to be some effort put forth in the drying. It can be put in the dryer and that only requires a few more dials to choose to receive the desired dryness for the specific type of load. One can still hang clothes on a line outdoors and there is a fresh scent to those cleaned items that is not duplicated in the dryer.
Then there is the "putting away" that stays a manual job. Folding clothes, placing in drawers, putting clothes on hangers and then in closets. Ironing was a huge item on the task lists for the homemaker of the past. Just imagining the need to iron those floor length, detailed dresses with bounces and flounces on the 1800's, 1900's-- no, don't imagine, and they did it without the aid of electricity! No wonder there was a need for the profession of "laundress" to have wonderful appearing garments.
Fabrics have changed and contributed greatly to the ease in all three steps--washing, drying and the finishing up. Rarely is there a need for ironing now. It would be a whole new topic for this blog. I recall melting a few items in my teenage years, best not recalled.
