It's funny. I've become so removed in 2009 from the work that a washing machine actually does that I have no idea how many cycles it moves through as it cleans my laundry. It's just a one-button job for me. Since typing up that long list of instructions from my 1945 housekeeping manual, though, I've been curious. So I stopped by the laundromat in my apartment complex tonight to take another peek at the machines there - just to see if there's any mention of cycles on the washers. Nada. The machines are Maytag Neptunes, front-loading commercial washers that were installed no more than 20 years ago when the complex was built. I haven't been able to find any information online specific to these washing machines, but I have been able to learn that modern washers in general run through at least the following cycles (and one less rinse cycle than suggested by my manual):
Wash
Spin
Rinse
Spin
Rinse
Spin
Now I'm curious to find out exactly how my machine operates. I think I'll hang out down there next Monday and listen to it as it moves through the cycles. Knowing the kind of energy that a 1940s housewife put into softening the water for each cycle, preparing a suds, draining and refilling the washer again and again --- it makes me really appreciate the work those Maytag Neptunes are saving me. In some sense, that is. After all, I'm putting my energy in other kinds of work in order to earn the quarters I put into those machines!
One item in my manual that I'm still puzzling over is the bit on "Soaking." Just before describing the process of "Washing," the authors advise their readers that white cottons and linens should be soaked for 15 to 30 minutes prior to washing, and colorfast cottons and linens for as long as 20 minutes. Do modern washers provide this cycle? The manual even recommends that "some authorities prefer a preliminary wash in cool suds to soaking, if a washer is used." Should I be soaking my laundry by hand before heading down to the laundromat?
5 comments:
i hear my machine go though all the different cycles, although i think an extra rinse wiould be super for an even less sudsy grey water to use... perhaps the 'soak'is replaced in modern machine by the time they spend sitting around whilst the machine fills up?
Some modern washers have a setting where the clothes soak for a period of time. I don't have such a setting on my machine but I do have a pre-wash setting. Sometimes I will turn it off about five minutes into the cycle and let it soak for a while before turning it back on. It can help to remove or lighten stains to let them soak.
W-E, you may be right. I haven't been able to peek inside the front-loaders while they're filling up, but the last time I used a top loader, it took awhile for the tub to fill with water.
Hairball, that's one thing I really miss about having a washer of my own. You have so much more control over how it operates.
I know that in the 1940s my granmother, who was a pharmacist's wife and thus middle class, did not have a washing machine. She either had to use a 'copper' to boil the clothes or have the washing 'sent out' for a washerwoman to do. There were definitely no clothesdryers.
Kate
Washing machines seem to have been pretty common here in the U.S. during the '40s, although they may have been pretty rough affairs in small town or farm homes. I've been reading a diary kept by a farm woman in upstate New York and though her home wasn't yet electrified, they did have a washer out in the woodshed that they was run on a gasoline motor. Dryers were definitely not available for even the wealthy until after the war.
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