Remember the washing machines in the days past.....

Davey Jones

Davey Jones

Well-known Member
Location
Florida
Our Moms use to wash everybody's clothes on a Monday,put the clothes "on the line" to dry at 9am,fold and put them away where they belong?
The clothes and especially the bedsheets use to smell like heaven. The next washload was the following Monday.

Today's Moms are washing/drying clothes just about every day or every other day.
How come today's kids clothes can only be worn ONCE then thrown in the hamper for Mom to wash the very next day or two? The adults are just as bad.
What have we become?
 
The teen here would not be caught dead wearing the same clothes,if she visits 3 of her friends in one day then that means change of clothes 3 times including more make-up since the last make up is 4 hours old.
And you know where all those "worn 3 hours" clothes end up,most are on the floor for the cats to sleep on.
 
I wear my clothes until they're ready to stand up and walk away on their own. The down-side is that I own very little clothing; the up-side is that I don't have much of a chore to wash it. Maybe once every two weeks.

Hey, I don't go out anywhere or have to meet any people, so I can afford to smell like yesterday's fish. ;)
 
I don't have a tumble dryer; and drying the washing outside makes a big difference I think...
 
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Until about ten years ago, I use to hang out our clothes too, until I realized our summer sun and heat were wearing out the fabrics so fast. We have our own well system, and it is very heavy with minerals that I am sure contributed to the problem. A dryer fixed that.
 
I well remember Mom hanging the laundry out on the line, even though we had a dryer. The dryer was only for rainy days or for stuff that she needed in a hurry.

And yes, the bedsheets and clothing always DID smell better from the line!

... unless of course it was one of those days when the city incinerator was running full-tilt. This was before the EPA days, and full sheets of burning newspapers would float down in our yard every so often. So, that sort of put the kibosh on line-drying - Mom would be frantically pulling the clothes off the line while screaming and cursing.

Ah, the good ol' days ... :rolleyes:
 
Pappy said:
I remember, in the wintertime, hanging the laundry outside was quite a feat. The bed sheets were like a sheet of plywood and you had to preform Kung Fu on the rest of the clothes to get them in the basket. Everything was frozen solid.
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For many years I didn't have a dryer. I had two little kids and a husband to wash clothes for. It was really hard to hang everything outside to dry. Yes, clothes smell better hung outside, but I was happy to give that up when I finally got a dryer.
 
I didn't have a washing machine for the first 2 years of marriage, 1 year was with my eldest daughter from newborn, everything was washed by hand until she was 12months old and we could afford a Washing Machine :coffeelaugh:
 
Jillaroo said:
I didn't have a washing machine for the first 2 years of marriage, 1 year was with my eldest daughter from newborn, everything was washed by hand until she was 12months old and we could afford a Washing Machine :coffeelaugh:
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Jill, there have been times when I didn't have a washing machine either, and had to wash everything by hand and hang it outside. That caused me to really appreciate it when I got a washer and dryer.
 
I remember using the old wringer washer as well ! When my first son was born, I used to hand wash most of his clothes, and then we had one of those little fold-up/expandable frames that we put by the fire in the winter, and used outside in the summer.
Eventually we moved to a place that had electricity, but no water, and lived there for many years. I had the wringer washer in the yard, above where my little garden area was at. We hauled the water in 55 gallon drums, and let it sit out to warm up until mid-day, and then siphoned it down to the wash machine, a load at a time.
The clothesline was right there , too, so it was easy to hang the clothes up after they were clean, and the dirty water drained down to the garden and watered the tomatoes, so it served double duty.
It did conserve water, since I could wash a load of whites, a load of colored, and a load of darks, before having to change the water. Of course, they were rinsed in fresh water, but that didn't take as much water as the washing machine took.
Now, I am thankful that I have a washer and a dryer, and I usually wash my clothes every night.
 
We used to have a family joke, that when your clothes were too dirty even for the washing machine you had to take them down to the river and beat them with a rock ... :rolleyes:

I actually did that once - I invented distressed denim 20 years before it became popular. :playful:
 
I was born in 1952. I had a stay at home mom. She washed clothes Mondays. Mom, my sister & I ironed everyone's clothes every Tuesday. I changed panties, socks and tops every day, but long pants & shorts were good for a few days.
 
Davey, if the teen is changing clothes 3 times a day and putting them in the dirty clothes it is time to let her do her own laundry. My 19 year old stepson lived with us for awhile. I would wash and iron his clothes until I found 75% of the clothes I had just washed and ironed laying on his closet floor. It seems he was trying to find something to wear. After that I refused and told him he could wash and iron his own clothes.

I still hang sheets out on the line on a nice day. However, I prefer my towels and clothes tumbled dried. As a child I remember running the clothes through the winger and hanging them on the line summer and winter. I still remember how happy and excited my mother was when my dad gave her a dryer for Christmas, me too.:)
 
Judi.D said:
Davey, if the teen is changing clothes 3 times a day and putting them in the dirty clothes it is time to let her do her own laundry.
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In today's teens,she will try to use her cell phone to try to start the washer.
I agree with you but her schedule is heavy with school work and after school sports,activities.I'd rather she concentrate on that and keep her grades up.
She will have plenty of days in the summer to do all these cores but she does make her bed daily by throwing the comforter over everything.(g)
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