Today AdRants mentioned a new commercial for Clorox that explores how laundry has changed over the years, and it made me think of visiting my great-aunt when I was growing up.
Aunt Edith had the most fascinating washing machine I’d ever seen. It had an open agitator drum for washing the clothes and washtub of rinse water right next to it, separated by a wringer. She would take the wet clothes from the wash water and run them through the wringer into the rinse water. Once they’d been rinsed to her satisfaction, she’d run them through the wringer again and put them in a basket to be taken outside and hung on the line. She did have a gas dryer, but she only used it in the wintertime and for towels that would have been too rough and scratchy if hung outside.
I loved to watch her do laundry when I visited. She would let me feed clothes into the wringer – carefully! The risk of pinching my fingers in the rollers made it that much more exciting. It was also an interesting novelty to hang clothes on the line. I’m sure I made more trips outside to check the laundry for dryness than was strictly necessary.
It never occurred to me to wonder why she still used such an old-fashioned laundry setup. It made perfect sense: why change something that works just fine? "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."
Many of my close relatives, including my great-aunt, my grandmother and even my dad, lived through the Great Depression and took its lessons to heart for the rest of their lives. Every time I darn one of my old socks, turn off extra lights in the next room, or make a stewing hen stretch into three meals, their influence comes through…and I appreciate it.
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