Istiqlál (Independence
I remember the first electric washing machine I ever saw. It
sat in my Grandma Newland’s laundry room. It was not like the automatic washer
I use today; Grandma’s washer agitated the dirty clothes, but did not rinse the
clothes. Instead, Grandma would take the clothes out of the wash water, put
them in a wringer, squeeze the water out, and then put the clothes through the
first rinse.
Grandma rinsed her clothes in huge aluminum tubes. Grandma
put her clothes through two rinses. After taking the clothes out of the washer
and wringing the soapy water out of them, she put them in hot water to rinse
the rest out the rest of the soap. After that, she put the clothes through the
wringer a second time to squeeze water out of them and then put them in the
second rinse.
In the second rinse, Grandma added several drops of “bluing”.
She did this to make the clothes whiter, I am not sure how the bluing worked;
however, it did work because the white shirts looked nicer and whiter after
they came out of the second rinse. After Grandma took the clothes out of the
second rinse and put them through the wringer again, she would hang them on the
clothesline to dry.
I helped Grandma with the laundry sometimes, especially on Saturday.
Grandma would stand right beside me when I went to use the wringer. She always
cautioned me not be careful about getting my hand caught in it. I never did get
my hand caught.
1 comment:
I do remember how wringer washer and put rubber diapers through that wringer diapers and explodes, and garments sometimes get stuck going around and around and around those wringers. I remember having to disassemble the whole wringer head to get something untangled. and I ruined a couple of shirts
Did you ever get anything caught in a wringer?or ruined a couple of shirts? Thanks for the reminders
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