I HATE doing laundry....

[Tubby & Peanut's Mom]

...or do I?
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Washing Clothes Recipe (Given a Young Bride By Her Grandmother)

Years ago an Alabama grandmother gave the new bride the following recipe. This is an exact copy as written and found in an old scrapbook - with spelling errors and all.

WASHING CLOTHES

Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water.

Set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert.

Shave one hole cake of lie soap in boilin water.

Sort things, make 3 piles
1 pile white,
1 pile colored,
1 pile work britches and rags.

To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth, then thin down with boiling water.

Take white things, rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard, and boil, then rub colored don't boil just wrench and starch.

Take things out of kettle with broom stick handle, then wrench, and starch.

Hang old rags on fence.

Spread tea towels on grass.

Pore wrench water in flower bed. Scrub porch with hot soapy water.

Turn tubs upside down.

Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, sit and rock a spell and count your blessings.

[sirrahbed]

I like the last part. (sit a spell) My worsch is wrenching right now.

[Laura's Babies]

Thank God we have progressed past that! I was ever so glad when they came out with perma press clothes too!

[JenBKR]

Yikes! I need to hear that every once in a while, makes me remember how lucky I am!

[QueenScoopalot]

All I can say is THANK GOD (or technologic advances) for washing machines! I recall the one my grandmother (who passed away years ago) had when we were kids. It was an old wringer model, and I was amazed at the wringer spools that she'd feed the wet clothing through to wring it out. I'll stick with the new models thank you.

[gini]

Debbie - I have one of the old wrench ringers on my wall in the breakfast room. Don't know if you saw it or not. They attached to the side of the washer and you put your clothes through it.

It always reminds me how VERY lucky I am to live in this era!

[Barbara]

I still remember we had a kettle in the cellar that could be wood-fired and my granny and my mom would boil the sheets in it every Monday.

And now I am so happy to have my washing machine (even if I -like many Europeans- don't have a dryer which is a running gag between Edwina's Secretary and me ) in which I can even wash silk and cashmere stuff

[Randi]

When I lived with my parents, we never had a washing machine, but in the sixties, my mom bought a smart thing in which you put the clothes, there's a handle on one side you turn around and a lid you screw on tightly. I used it a lot to color clothes in. I've still got it.

I remember my granny having a wash board, and she was collecting rain water in buckets. She also had to go half a mile? to get water from a well and then boil it, if she wanted it hot. I used to go and get some buckets for her, like everyone else did.

A washing machine is probably the item I would miss the most if things got back to like they were a hundred years ago. It's really hard work doing it all by hand.

[Killearn Kitties]

Yep, I agree, I'd find it awfully hard to do without a washing machine. It's easy to forget what massive technological advances were made in a very short time in the 20th century. No other era has ever seen that pace of change.

Although I quite agree, Barbara, Lady Edwina needs to have a word with her secretary about the fact that she finds people without driers quite bizarre!

[catnapper]

I can only imagine life without my washing machine.Its a fight I have with my daughter about clean clothes being tossed into the laundry.... maybe I should make her wash one load in the above mentioned manner and she'd think twice before considering a pair of jeans or sweater "dirty" that was worn for a whole twenty minutes. Oh, if only she knew they took a ride in the dryer to fluffen them up before folded and returned (completely missing the washing step).

[cocker_luva]

haha

[sandragonfly]

..I'm not sure if I got them all.. since I can't hear, I don't know which words are suppose be.. I could tell which ones are wrong but what word instead?

can someone please trans the whole for me because I like this already!