Warshing Clothes

[asirimarco]

Just got this in the email - thought I'd share - I remember the wringer washer - and getting my fingers stuck in the wringers - then hanging clothes outside in the winter - bringing them in stiff from cold to iron them. enjoy

Warshing" Clothes Recipe.........

Never thought of a "warsher" in this light before..what a blessing!
"Warshing Clothes Recipe" -- imagine having a recipe for this ! ! !
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.

WARSHING 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.

================================================

Paste this over your washer and dryer Next time when you think things are bleak, read it again, kiss that washing machine and dryer, and give thanks.. First thing each morning you should run and hug your washer and dryer.

For you non-southerners - wrench means, rinse

AND WE THOUGHT WE HAVE IT ROUGH

[retiredhappy]

Thank heavens for modern appliances BUT does anything every smell as good as clothes or sheets dried outside in the sunshine and wind?

[Acadianmom]

I remember my grandmother building a fire under a large iron pot, at least 4' across, to heat water to wash clothes. She made her own soap and it smelled bad. That stuff would take your hide off. She washed like that until 1961 when my dad retired and moved next door. Then my mother would do her wash. My mother had one of the washer's that had the ringers you had to run clothes through. Many times we would get our fingers in the ringer fooling around. In 1959 she had bought an automatic washer from Sears when my dad was overseas. She charged it and the payments were $7.00 a month. I had to help her balance her check book and I was only about 15 so I remember the payments. When my dad came home he thru a fit and wouldn't let her use it. It sat unused until sometime while I was in college she got mad enough to hook it up and start using it. Crap like that made me determined that a man was not going to tell me what I could do.

Martha

[Rufflesgurl]

Definitely remember the wringer washers - had them when we were kids and, yes, we helped doing the wash. Whey my mother-in-law had her babies (now in their late 60's) she did not have a dryer. Can you imagine having all those diapers and baby clothes to wash and dry? My daughter has 4 Mo. twins and her washer/dryer go for hours every day. WOW things sure have changed/progressed. Look at all the technology we've seen in just the last 10 years. Are we lucky to have all these conveniences????

Linda

[AlmostThere]

Remember the wringer washer and rinse tubs like it was yesterday! On wash day the kitchen was piled high with stacks of clothes and every tree in the yard had a clothesline strung from it! (there were 9 of us kids!! !) Then came the "days" of my Mom ironing those clothes! And yes, I remember her using the scrub board, too. And her fingers dry, cracked and bleeding.

[dpf]

Yeppers...I remember the wringer washer and rinse tubs too. Washing the whites and less dirty clothes first and the last loads were always dad's really dirty farm clothes or rugs. Funny thing is that with an automatic I still do my whites first and go down the line to the really dirty stuff. Although when we built our house we put in two laundry hook ups...one upstairs for the good clothes and in the mudroom in the basement we have a set for DH dirty/smelly farm clothes. Love it...no more foul smells from sprays, fuel and dung to stick to the next load.

[Carolinagal]

I don't date back to the boiling clothes over the fire with homemade yukky smelling soap. But the scrub board and wringer washer, both were in my life. The scrub board over a tub, when first husband was in service, I was a very young bride and did what was expected of me His uniforms always passed inspection, starched with creases just so, so. Wish I still had that scrub board, might make a penny off of it as an antique now Martha, I knew some of those men, like your Dad, back in the 50's there were loads of them everywhere The wringer washer was mine during child rearing years, with the diapers etc. , the wringer quit, and I had the strongest hands in the area. I graduated to washer and dryer finally, but I do miss hanging my sheets outside, they used to smell so fresh and felt crisp during the summer time.

I enjoyed the recipe for warshing , glad I never used that particular one though So nice to see you posting again, Carol. I have been wondering about you, what happened and then here you are, about the time, I thought of pm'ing you.

take care
CArol

[Redetotry]

I don't remember my Granny 'warshing' in the cast iron kettle that hung on a rod thingie in her back yard but I do remember her making lye soap. She washed her dishes in that soap and probably her clothes for a long time and I hated the smell! I still have the old kettle at a friends house.
I too remember doing the wash on the back porch in a wringer washer and getting fingers caught and how black the water was after I finished my Daddy's clothes from the mines.ickkkk Yes we should all be thankful for our washer and dryers!!

[avalen]

whats a scrub board? just kidding
we had one of those old wringer washers up at our cabin (way back in the married days)
also had a few of those scrub boards, two were glass and one was metal.
Love the "recipe" Carol, thanks for posting that

[asirimarco]

Remember the wire things you put in the legs of pants to stretch them while they were drying on the line. Took most of the wrinkles out? And folding all the diapers that got stiff while drying? I had 2 in diapers before we got a dryer. Do they even make cloth diapers any more?
Before we spent the year in South America I had a washer and dryer so none of us thought too much about changing clothes and putting on clean ones. Let me tell you that changed while living there and doing laundry pretty much by hand. Just one of things I wrote about it.
http://www.movingon1.com/argentinamdp3.html
Guess I'm really spoiled now.

[Carolinagal]

Do I remember those wire thingies? My Dad lived with us in the 90's and he couldn't wear pants that had not been stretched on those things. I disliked them intensely. When we all moved up here, SOMEHOW they got lost To this day, thats all I am willing to admit

CArol

[JanetA]

OF COURSE we remember these things! WE ARE OLD! ! !!

[BirdbyBird]

Old is a relative term Everyone else is just looking younger and younger but gosh darn...as my 92 year old mother-in-law once shared ....inside we still feel the same as that young woman that we were just maybe a little wiser.......

[AlmostThere]

Tina, don't know about wiser. Seems just as I think I have the answers the questions change!

[Nasoosie]

This reminds me of the happiest year of my life, so far.

When my daughter, Amanda, was born in April of 1975, her father and I were living in a log cabin at the foot of a small mountain. Wiley (father and my husband) was working in Albany, about 2.5 hours away, so it was just Mandy and me in the cabin during the week. I kept her next to me in my bed, in her little plastic bathtub with a matress in it, and, as I was breast feeding, Just woke up with her, changed her, fed her, talked to her, hugged her, and then we both went back to sleep all night long. No stress, no complaining about baby crying....just total motherhood bliss for me! Weekends became way more stressful, as Wiley wanted her on a schedule and quiet all night long. NOT!

But, back to warshing----there was no well or water supply at the house, other than a hose I ran from a dammed-up spring on the mountain to my pipes inside. I used that for cooking and drinking and washing clothes and dishes. It was slow running, but very clean. No pump...just gravity flow. I bought an old electric wringer/washer at a garage sale, and Wiley made me a bench to hold two washtubs---one for rinsing, and one for softener for Mandy's didies. Then I would wring them out with the wringer (OUCHIE many times! and hang them out in the sun to dry....or, on rainy days, on the back porch.

I could not have had a more fun, more challenging, more wonderful 'private' time with my new baby girl. I would go back there in a heartbeat, if I could.

When it was time for me to take a bath, I would load her into an old, very cushy baby carriage that I also got at a garage sale, covered with mosquito netting, and down the dirt road to the swimming hole in the brook we would go. I would bathe and wash my hair, while she chortled and talked to the trees overhanging her carriage.

By the time she was one year old, she and I would walk along the dirt road to the swimming hole, and I would teach her the names of all the trees and flowers and birds. She never forgot a one of them! What an amazing girl she is!