# Did you/your mother/grandmother adhere to the Monday washday,



## GeorgiaXplant (Aug 23, 2015)

Tuesday ironing day, Wednesday mending...routine?

On Monday, there was always a pot of something cooking on the back of the stove. Whatever it was, it got started well before the laundry so that we didn't have to take time out to cook supper.

At our house and at both my grandmothers' houses, the mending, starching and sprinkling was done on Tuesday.

Wednesday was for bread-making, ironing and "small" baking. 

Thursdays were usually when we went to town to shop (I don't remember what it was we shopped for!). 

Friday, a grocery list was made and called in to the neighborhood grocery store for Saturday delivery. I can't remember what else we did on Friday.

Saturday was for making bread again, changing the bed linens, baking for Sunday and the first part of the week and for cleaning. If chicken or duck was going to be Sunday dinner, one of the chickens or ducks was "offed", plucked, cleaned. If venison was on the menu, my dad whacked a roast or whatever from the frozen carcass in the shed so that it would thaw by morning. Saturday was also a back-of-the-stove supper day.

Sunday was for cooking dinner. It was a project, and we usually had company coming. On a lucky Sunday, we were the company that somebody else expected

I really liked Tuesdays because that's the day we'd have leftovers from Sunday dinner.

During the summer we also had the garden to care for...that took a couple of hours every morning before we started on the rest of the day's chores.

No wonder women didn't usually work anywhere else. When would they have had time?


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## AZ Jim (Aug 23, 2015)

My Grandma to the sound of the radio playing "ma perkins" (soap opera) took out her large wash tub and scrub board and hand washed her laundry in the  back yard.  Then hung it all on the lines.  Grandma had just came to California from Arkansas in 1936 and had no washing machine yet.  These memories are precious to me.


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## hollydolly (Aug 23, 2015)

No my mother had to wash most days because there was 6 of us at home...and she worked as a Staff nurse during  much of my childhood as well as spening long spells in hospital as a patient as well . She had an old copper boiler that she boiled the linen in and a single tub electric washing machine with a hand wringer attached which I always had to try and turn the clothes through to get some of the water out.. it was soo hard to turn it if you put anything thicker than a sock through it...
	

	
	
		
		

		
			






 She'd often have a scrubbing board in the sink for things that were particularly stained and scrubbed till her fingers were raw. No-one had Marigolds in those days... The laundry baskets were always so heavy to carry out to the washing line. 

We kids always had chores to do before and after school.. mostly just me actually, shopping , cleaning floors, etc, and every night from age 6  until I finally left home I had to wash and dry all the dishes and cookware  for 6 people after dinner , a mammoth task that always took me about an hour or more until I was too tired to do my homework ..

Nothing was routine in our house...and to this day I hate routine 

OTOH, I remember my granny doing her washing on a Monday..she didn't have a washing machine so she would take all her clothing down to what they used to call a 'steamie' in Scotland which was a communal wash house back in the day,  situated about a mile from her tenement flat where she would pay a few pennies to use hot water,  boilers and wringers, then fold it all up wet  into a big sheet and take it all home again and hang it out to dry in the communal back yard of her tenement building.. even though the washing for them was back breaking and took hours  sometimes  all day  many women in those days  enjoyed going to the steamie once a week just for the company and conversation  of other women.


 Scottish steamie


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## imp (Aug 23, 2015)

Yes! For my Mother, then later my sister, divorced and with a small child, Mondays were absolutely reserved for doing the wash! It was dried outdoors on clothes-lines except in winter, when it was hung in the basement. That evening, the stuff was ironed. An R-C (Royal-Crown) Cola bottle fitted with a corked sprinkler head was used to "sprinkle" the clothes. A brown small pyramid-shaped scar in the kitchen linoleum marked where the hot iron fell once, point down!

Early on, the washing machine consisted of a drum with an agitator, to which was attached a 2-roller wringer, which was motor-powered, not hand. Following that, my Mother demanded, and got, what she called an "Easy Spin-Dryer" washer. I do not recall the maker, but the words Easy Spin-Dryer were clearly imprinted on it. Looked like this earlier model, only much cleaner cosmetically, smooth white outer housing:





The large drum agitated and washed, the smaller drum spun the excess water out.  I wondered even as a kid, why that spinner was not larger in diameter! Hard to stuff the clothes, wet, into, and difficult to pull them out after spinning.

Do not remember any particular "must do" things for the rest of the week, except maybe when my Mother. trying to conform a bit to her lost Catholic roots, made a fish dish on Fridays!     imp


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## Cookie (Aug 23, 2015)

The routine chores were done in our home on Saturday mornings when my mom did the laundry in a electric wringer/washer and hung to dry out on clothesline.  My sister and I did the weekly cleaning. My dad usually mucked around outside in the garden, mowed the lawn or cleaned out the garage.  Then dinner and whatever else we wanted to do - go out with friends, watch tv or just hang around.


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## GeorgiaXplant (Aug 23, 2015)

When we first came back Stateside after the war, we didn't have a washer, either. Our laundry was done on a washboard like AZ Jim describes, using Fels Naptha soap. When we got a washer, it was a Blackstone, and we really felt like we were stylin'! We filled two galvanized tubs for the rinse water and had to put the clothes through the wringer twice. Lost count of how many times my arm went through that blankety-blank wringer along with the clothes.

We didn't have hot running water at our house so as was done at Hollydolly's house, the water was heated in a copper boiler on the kitchen stove.

The galvanized tubs we used for rinse water were also our bathtubs, and the bath water was heated in the copper boiler. When my dad put in the bathroom and a tub, we still didn't have hot running water so that copper boiler full of hot water had to be carried up the stairs until the next summer when we got a water heater. When that water heater was installed, we knew we had ARRIVED!


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## Aunt Marg (May 2, 2020)

One of my grandmas staunchly adhered to a rigid schedule when it came to doing all things in and around the home, but as for my mom and myself, not so.

With the birth of me in 1963, and the subsequent births of my 4 younger siblings (1966 to 1973), we had a busy home. With two in diapers (always), diapers were washed every other day, sometimes every day, depending on the babies needs, bedding was laundered every other week, crib sheets and bedding was changed weekly (or when needed), and regular household laundry (civilian wear) was tackled as it came.

I remember the vinyl-padded hamper we had in the baby room for dry laundry that was dirty and needed changing. Crib sheets, pyjama bottoms, socks, shirts... all went into the baby hamper... and diapers, rubber pants, baby washcloths, and training pants, were stored in the plastic diaper pail.

What a dream it was when mom got her first automatic washing machine!

Same for my home, laundry back in the day, as well as today, get's done as it needs to be done, no schedule, no routine.


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## JaniceM (May 2, 2020)

When all the kids were still at home, my mother did have that washing/ironing routine.  And ironing wasn't only clothes, but sheets etc. too.


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