Remember when....

I remember that Pappy, my Grandma and Mom use to do that. The long Johns were so stiff you could stand them in the corner. They would hang them outside in the morning and haul them in later on in the day to dry down in our basement.
 
Pappy, to solve this problem in winter we had an elaborate set of clotheslines set up in the basement. It was especially fun as a kid when my mother washed a lot of sheets. Like a maze, I would ride my tricycle through it, between the sheets. Can't find a photo, but imagine all this shoved into a 15x40 room.

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yes i remember those days--clothes and hands frozen stiff---then in the summer there was a cherry tree next door in a neighbors yard the birds ate the cherries and decorated my clothes i had a time getting the stains out--as long as i have accest to a dryer thats where my clothes will go
 
I can remember my Mum using curtain stretcher and pants stretchers......and starch...lots of starch!
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Meanderer said:
I can remember my Mum using curtain stretcher and pants stretchers......and starch...lots of starch!
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I had forgotten the curtain stretcher. My mother would take down all the lace curtains, wash them gently and peg them on the stretchers that my dad had built for her. What a pain! Thank goodness it was only a couple times a year, spring and fall.

Remember the clothes pin bag?

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My mother always used the old fashioned clothes pins instead of the spring-type ones. You had to wipe down the clothesline with a damp cloth before you hung the clothes up or you'd get marks on the light-colored ones.

We had a long clothesline in the yard. One time I came sailing in on my bicycle at dusk and ran into the low part of the clothesline. It caught me right across the forehead and SPANG! catapulted me right off my bike.

When we were living in Turkey, I had a maid (very reasonable....$2 a day and 2 eggs) who hand-washed our clothes in the bathtub. We bought an old Maytag wringer washer from another Yank and you would have thought she had had an offer to wash the queen's laundry. She was so in love with that machine. She'd run stuff through the wringer several times just to enjoy the action.
 
I remember the pants stretchers, but not or curtains.

Yes Jujube i remember the old clothespin bags and also the fruit bushel-baskets lined with some colorful lining for the clothes.

Gosh, a maid...for 2.00 per day, wow!

iu


and the clothes sprinklers
iu
 
I’ve never seen snow ,the worst I’ve ever seen is frozen water hoses from a heavy frost
I’d have to travel to NSW or Victoria in the winter to see snow in the winter ( it’s summer here ) that would be about a 2.500 km return trip
 
oooh I remember the frozen clothes on the washing line in the winter...frozen sheets and towels...lol... and having to bring them in and hang them on the pulley in the kitchen to drip dry.

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We had no central heating so my mother would light the oven to make the kitchen warm. The memory has just brought back the smell of the icy freshness of the clothes tho'...

We always used Dolly pegs as well, rather than the spring loaded ones.

i remember the Peg Bags as well...I still see them in some stores here. .I've got one in our house in Spain because we always hang the clothes out on the roof solarium during the summer.

We only used starch on the mens' shirts and our school shirts.. but it made a real mess of the iron base..


I've never heard of a curtain stretcher tho'
 
Ah, the clothes sprinklers.... Some women would put the damp clothes in a bag in the refrigerator for a while for some reason. My mother never did, probably because there was never room in there for laundry.

My mother loved ironing and still does at 92. She says it's very soothing. I had to help with the ironing but I only had to do the flat things - pillowcases, etc. - because I was an absolute ham-hand at the fancy stuff like the little puffed sleeves and ruffles and all that.

I got my fill later ironing my husband's Army uniforms; iron in one hand and can of spray starch in the other. It wasn't just the ironing that was a pain, it was the creases that had to be very sharp and in EXACTLY the right place (i.e., the crease would have to go through the eagle's left wing on a certain patch on a shirt, the crease would have to EXACTLY bisect the pocket on the pants, the collar had to have a sharp crease EXACTLY 1 3/4 inches from the hem, etc.) Heaven help the soldier who showed up with the creases in the wrong place if the major woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.
 
Oh my, goodness. I'd completely forgotten about clothes pegs. Hmm. Just reading about the fresh smell of clothes dried outside makes the smell return to me.
 
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