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Wash Day

Di.Poppitt

Di.Poppitt

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Reading Alberta's post set me thinking about the awful Mondays in our house, and a lot of other houses I'm sure.

We woke on a cold winter's Monday and we could have been in an igloo. It was wash day and the day to black lead the grate, so the fire couldn't be lit.
When I got up Mom was hauling water by the bucket load into the wash tub, which filled the kitchen. The sink was full of clothes soaking, and there was a bowl of water on the table in the living room for me to wash. The fire under the boiler was lit after I had gone to school.

The clothes were 'maided' in the tub, transfered into the boiler where they cooked until they were considered clean, taken out and put through the 'blue' which was always in a small tin bath. As if this wasn't enough most of them then went through the starch bowl.

By the time I got home at lunch time the place was in turmoil, and mom's temper was foul. She would be no where near finished and I dreaded going through the door.

On a really cold frosty day the clothes sat on the line like a row of cardbord soldiers, and as I gew and could reach the pegs I was sent to unpeg them and bring them in. They were frozen to the line and once I'd wrestled them off they crackled as I staggered back with them. My fingers were numb and woe bedtide me if I dropped anything.

There were days to top all of that, when the line broke............. :roll: :roll:
 
A couple of memories I have of wash days............

Getting an enormous blood blister inside my leg when my brother turned the handle of the wringer I was sitting astride

Trousers standing all on their own on a frosty morning when they were fetched in after spending the night on the line.
 
Remember the clothes line prop Di. I have not seen one of those in years. We still hang our clothes out in Canada when the weather is suitable but the line is a steel braded one sheathed in plastic and is continuous going round a wheel at each end. There are some housing developments here that will not allow a clothes line to be used. Considered to degrade the neighbourhood.
Regards.
 
Yes Rupert I do remember the clothes prop. A neigbour of my aunts used hers to clout a cockerel that was hanging on to the top of my leg. :eek:
 
My late Dad used to tell story's about the old days when he lived in an ASTON back to back court yard were they had to share LOOs & BREWHOUSES. The one I remember. One washday morning My Nan gets all the washing together and out to the Brewhoues, to light the fire under the large brickmounted copper boiler, which was in the corner of the building.
Firelighters at the ready,washing under her arm, out she went,only to find one of the other tenant's had started her washing by lighting a fire under the boiler.4ft of aston grit was My Nan out came the shovel & into yard went the newly set fire.MONDAYS WERE MY NAN'S WASHDAY & THAT WAS THAT!
I should point out at this point, each family in the yard had there own special washday, it was taboo to do yours on some one Else's day.
THAT NEVER HAPPENED AGAIN. So My Dad said.
 
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