Are You Sure It's Been a Week?

My first thought when my alarm started buzzing at me yesterday morning: "Monday, again? Already?" Yep, the week makes it's round very quickly. I can remember so easily how happy I was last Tuesday evening when the washing and ironing were done. My clothes were clean and pressed. And not a speck of laundry to worry about for the rest of the week. Liberation! I'm not sure how those five days got by me so quickly. All I know is that the Monday Wash was back in my court in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

What a lot of work. I was up late into the night yesterday handwashing the "Gentle Cycle Only" items. Between sick days and holiday weekends, this is the first time since I took on these missions that I've had both the washing and ironing to do along with two full days at work. No wonder it's feeling like a ton of bricks! Nevertheless, I know the weeks are just going to get more and more rigorous, and I don't want to wear myself to the point of exhaustion every Monday handwashing stuff that could be washed just as nicely in a machine. I'll never have enough "Gentle Cycle Only" clothes in a single week to make up a full load, but what's stopping me from washing similar-colored items in a gentle cycle instead of a regular cycle? It's not like the rest of my clothes are so grimy and greasy that they couldn't relax in the gentle cycle from time to time. I'll still have some handwashing to do, but this should cut down on that a little. I still have to put some thought into sorting my laundry on Sunday nights. Should I bleach my whites this week? Do I need to get creative to put a gentle cycle load together? Which items need to be pulled before going into the dryer? Do I have enough quarters?

Tonight: the ironing. It's one big load of cottons and cotton blends this week. American Idol is just starting - the Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour of the 21st century - so that should keep me entertained... Here are some of the Top Ten Tips I still need to work into my technique:

2. When you straighten material on the ironing board or roll of a rotary ironer, use the palms of your hands and smooth from the center out. Your fingers are apt to stretch the fabrics and pull them out of shape.

3. Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric.

5. Collars, cuffs, sleeves, belts and trimmings are ironed first, then the flat sections of the garment.

10. Do not use too hot an iron or shoe. Most hand irons are thermostatically controlled. Ironers are also equipped with thermostatic controls so that you can select the proper heat for the fabric... Combinations of fibers - adjust heat to fiber needing lowest temperature.

Oh, yes. My breakfast menu this morning included something I haven't had since I was a kid:

Orange Juice

Scrambled Eggs

Toast

Marmalade

It's been years since I tried Marmalade. (There's something about candied citrus peel that's never appealed to me.) It was okay. A very orange-y breakfast, too. It's not every day that your juice and marmalade coordinate so nicely!

Rinso White, Rinso Bright

Rinso white, Rinso bright,

Happy little washday song!

Did you know the Rinso label has been sold by its longtime owners, and you can buy Rinso bleach now in 99 Cents Only stores? Of course, Rinso used to be a detergent rather than a bleach, but it's awful neat to see the power of 1940s marketing still in play.

I'm taking a sick day today because of my cold, so had lots of extra time to do my wash - including my handwashing. Not exactly a true test based on a typical Monday schedule, but I guess it's a good chance to work up getting the wash done on a regular weekly workday. I did three loads at the laundromat this morning. The whites went in with a dash of Rinso bleach. I was mistaken when I said yesterday that the washers in my laundromat don't have a delicates cycle. They do, but I think it'd probably take me two months just to accumulate a load of delicates!

I pulled the two rayon items after washing them at the laundromat and followed the instructions in my manual for drying rayons (as best I can understand, "turkish towels" are terry bath towels):

Roll garments in turkish towels to remove excess moisture, then unroll immediately and iron when ready... It is safer to allow prints and spun rayons to dry until barely damp, before ironing.

I did my handwashables this afternoon and was surprised by how much water I ended up using... which here, in the desert, is very uncool. It took four rinses to get the suds out of my nylon top, two rinses to get the suds out of my bras, and, well, I gave up after four rinses in trying to get the suds out of my acrylic sweater. Now it could be that the soap I used - a "gentle" gel hand soap - created a richer suds than the soaps recommended for handwashing in the '40s. I'm not sure. The authors of the manual fully expected their readers to have to rinse any handwashables "several times" until they could get a nice suds-free water. I think in the future that I'll follow the modern instructions on the label for garments like these and wash them in a machine with the rest of my laundry if at all possible. My bathroom sink may have gotten a great cleansing along the way, but the water usage was super guilt inducing. And my hands are so dry and raw.

It wasn't such a "happy little washday" here at the Jitterbug residence, but it was educational!

Nylon, Polyester, and Acrylic... Oh, My!

It's Sunday night and - cold or no - time to sort my laundry in preparation for Wash Day.

My pile of white garments and towels is big enough this week to make a full load of bleachables. There is one white article I'm not sure what to do with. It's made of 92% nylon/8% spandex. My manual only mentions nylon once (it had only hit markets in 1939) and this is in reference to nylon stockings. Precious articles that they were during the war years, nylon stockings were strictly handwashable. Well, a handwashing it shall get.

I've got another item which is 49% rayon/48% polyester/3% spandex. One of the things I learned about rayons last week is that they could - even in 1945 - be washed by machine in a lukewarm suds, but there are very specific directions about drying these pieces by hand. I'll have to remember to pull this tomorrow morning and dry it by hand in my apartment. That modal/spandex item from last week will get the same treatment.

A few more to go. I've got a shirt which is 65% polyester/35% cotton. Though chemists were hard at work on polyester during the 1940s, it wasn't introduced to the marketplace until about 1953. So I think it's safe to say I'm not going to find any useful guidance on laundering polyester in any manual from this period. Just going to follow the instructions on the garment's label: "Machine wash warm... Tumble dry." Next is a 100% acrylic sweater. From what I've been able to find online, acrylic wasn't introduced to the market as a textile until 1950, so I'm in the same spot as with the last garment: "Machine wash cold. Delicate cycle... Tumble dry low." There is no delicate cycle on the machines in my laundromat, so I'll have to handwash this item.

A bra is quite a tricky item. One of mine is made up of polyester/nylon/polyurethane foam/cotton/spandex - but more polyester than anything else. I'll trust the label on this one: "Hand wash warm water with like colors. Do not bleach. Line dry." The label on another one is nearly impossible to read, but appears to be some blend of nylon/elastic. I'll handwash this one as I would nylon stockings. These are tough little buggers!

That's it. Two handwashables plus my bras. Two more hand dryables. I'm not sure yet whether I'll do the handwashables while my laundry's in the dryers or whether I'll save 'em for tomorrow evening.