Blue Monday

When I was growing up, we used to spend a couple weeks every summer visiting grandparents and other extended family in a little town in northern Maine where my parents were raised. Laundry Day at my grandmother's house was a big event. I remember marveling as she wheeled this appliance out from the corner of the kitchen. Six days a week, it blended into the woodwork - but on Laundry Day it became the star of the show. My grandmother's washing machine must have been at least thirty years old. It didn't have an internal water supply. Grammie would connect it by a hose to the kitchen sink and fill the machine with water twice for each load of laundry. I suppose the first time for a wash cycle and the second time for a rinse. When all the laundry had been carried off in baskets to be hung outdoors on the clothesline, the machine was rolled back into its corner where it lurked about until Laundry Day came around again.

The washers of the 1940s - and even the washers of my grandmother's day - were a far cry from the miracle workers of today. Today, we drop our clothes inside, dash a bit of liquid in the proper reservoir, and go. The machine takes it from there and we open it up about a half hour later to clean, well-wrung clothes ready to be whisked into another machine for drying. My '40s counterpart would have marveled at the convenience. Her washer did some, but very little of the work for her. In fact, it was only one step up from handwashing clothes. My manual spends almost as much time making suggestions for washing the laundry by hand as it does for washing it by machine, which tells me that probably only half of its readers were lucky enough to own a washing machine.

In just 1 hour and 18 minutes, my two loads of laundry this morning were clean and dry. And on a rainy day to boot. To contrast, here is a sampling of the instructions required to run a washing machine, circa 1945:

1. Fill washer to the water line with water of correct temperature (130 degrees F. for white cottons and linens; 110 degrees F. for colored fabrics).

2. Add water softener if necessary.

3. Add measured mild soap (in flake, chip, powder or bead form, or shaved bar soap) in the amount necessary to make standing suds.

4. Operate the washer until the soap is completely dissolved and there is a topping of suds 2-3 inches deep.

This is all before the clothes are even placed in the washer, mind you!

5. Add the correct load of clothes as suggested by the manufacturer.

6. Wash rumpled or lightly soiled white articles first, then more heavily soiled pieces. Colored articles are washed in this same order.

7. Time the washing period:

5 minutes for rumpled or lightly soiled articles

10-15 minutes for heavily soiled articles

8. If clothes are not clean at the end of this time, wash them a second time for 4-6 minutes in fresh, clean suds.

9. If stubborn soil remains on certain areas, scrub gently with a soft brush and thick suds until clean.

10. If the water is soiled after one load of clothes is washed, drain it off and prepare fresh suds for the second load.

11. Extract the wash water thoroughly by wringing or spinning before putting the clothes in the first rinse water.

And that's just the wash cycle. Three rinse cycles were recommended for each load of laundry, and every one of these cycles required draining the washer and refilling it. The laundress had to prepare a pot of starch on a stovetop for everything from children's clothes to blouses, shirts, and slacks. And each piece of laundry had to be pressed through the wringer before being hung to dry. What a project! It's hard for me to fathom having to spend so much time on laundry. And for many women, their washing machines were located in unfinished basements. Not a particularly bright or cheery place to work. No wonder this day earned the moniker Blue Monday.