We have just had a good thunderstorm (if they can be “good”!)
with heavy heavy rain. It certainly cooled
down the temperatures and sent us rushing to shut windows. The cats came flying inside and we had to
turn the stereo up to be able to hear it!
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| A display at Matamata Museum (2007) |
In my lifetime I have experienced three different types of
washing machines.
The first was the wringer washing machine, an upright
agitator machine that was used with a wringer/mangle to squeeze the water from
the washed laundry.
My mother had one of these and I remember her using two concrete
laundry tubs with the wringer mounted between them. Fascinatingly, one tub always seemed to have
blue water in it with a little deep blue bag sitting on the soap dish. In later years I discovered that bluing was a
popular way to stop your whites from looking dingy.
My grandmother also owned one of these, and when she had
finished her washing she would carefully empty out the machine and bucket the
water out to her garden. She always
maintained her citrus never suffered from any pests or diseases because she
regularly threw soapy water over the trees!
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| A wringer washing machine |
My mother eventually traded her wringer machine in for a
twin-tub washer made by Hoovermatic.
Because of its superior ability to spin water from the washed items, her
sheets would dry in one day while the neighbour’s would sit on the line for a
few days. I think it was a sort of
competition between them!
When I married in the early 1970s we received one of these
machines as a wedding present. It was
fantastic for conserving water as several loads could be washed in the same hot
water, the same as a wringer machine but so different from today’s automatic
machines. One would start off with
whites and progress through the washing until the dirty work clothes were done
last. Fresh cold water was used to rinse
each load, before spinning them almost dry.
It used to take me about an hour a day, when the children
were small, to stand at the washing machine and wash everything. When a load was finished washing I used a
good-sized stick to lift it into the spinner side of the machine. The hot washing water was spun back into the
wash-side, and then cold water attached to the spinner. When the water level was high enough, the
machine would spin it out into the laundry tub.
A couple of these rinses and the things could be left to spin longer
before throwing them into the clothes basket to be hung up on the outside line.
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| The twin-tub Hoovermatic washing machine |
We bought an automatic washing machine ten years later, but
I still kept my old twin-tub to wash very dirty clothes and anything that had
sand in it. The first automatic I ever saw was a top-loader that the lady I boarded with had purchased. She was very fussy about what was washed in
it, and it used to bounce across the laundry floor as it washed. It was her pride and joy!
Nowadays, everything goes into the machine. With its fancy computer technology, the
machine can wash everything from delicate drip-dries to the dirtiest overalls
(in different cycles, not together!), and even sense how much water is
required. Throw the washing in and walk
away! When the machine beeps, then it is
ready to throw into the dryer or hang out on the line.
Only trouble is, these machines do not seem to last as long as their predecessors, as we have purchased a few of them now.
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| Our current Fisher & Paykel automatic washing machine |
Most of my laundry is hung on an outside line to dry. Not a propped-up line like shown in my first
picture, but on a rotary clothes line. I
like the smell of fresh air, sunshine and wind in my clothing and linen. One of our neighbours used to always wash her
sheets when rain was threatening as she loved the smell the rain gave them!
What type of washing machines have you used?
Margaret
