I've read a lot about what you might call the history of domestic work, and one thing that has always struck me is how much it sucked to wash clothes. Every history of women's work I have ever read has specifically outlined the incredible physical labor involved in a wash day. So much hauling of water and pouring it in and out of tubs and agitating and scrubbing and wringing and NO THANKS.
Then my washing machine stopped working and I got a very small partial taste of hand-powered washing which did nothing to change my mind about how much it must have sucked.
See, on Tuesday when I opened up the washing machine to take the clothes out to hang up on the clothesline, they were still sopping wet. I quickly ascertained that the agitator and spin cycle weren't working.
I pulled the clothes out anyway, wrung them out as best I could outside, and hung them on the clothesline to drip and eventually get dry*.
Now. We do not live in a place where it is easy to A) get appliances repaired or B) buy new appliances.
I figured A. could probably fix this machine with the aid of YouTube tutorials. However, he didn't get home from New York until Tuesday night and has been trying to catch up with work ever since.
He brought a bunch of dirty clothes home with him, and the rest of us keep producing dirty clothes, too. And while the washing machine isn't operating all the way, it's still partially working. That is, it fills with water and drains by itself. All I needed to do was the agitating and wringing part.
Or rather, A. did. He's much stronger than I am, you see. So I put in a load of laundry, soaked it in warm water for awhile, and handed A. Cubby's Little League bat.
He used to bat to agitate the clothes and sort of lift them up and around in the water. Then I drained the water and re-filled it for another round with the baseball bat. I don't use soap anyway, so I wasn't required to do multiple rinsings to get rid of the soap.
Who needs a machine agitator when you have a baseball bat?
After that, I just squeezed them out as best I could in the washer and hung them on the clothesline. They didn't get as clean as they would have if the machine had done it all--I probably should have done another rinse--and they certainly didn't get as dry, but they definitely got cleaner.
I did another load after this one by myself, which convinced me that I would have been a terrible pioneer woman. My hands were sore from the agitating and hand wringing, my sleeves were wet up to the elbow, and that was only one load. And I didn't have to haul, heat, or dump out any water.
A. promised me he would take the machine apart and look at it this weekend. Until then, if you need me, I'll be here doing my laundry with a baseball bat. Because that, my lovelies, is how this weird and wonderful life goes sometimes.
* I was once again grateful to have a good long clothesline as it meant I wasn't putting the sopping wet clothes in a clothes dryer to burn propane for the two hours it would have taken them to actually dry. Hooray for long clotheslines and excellent New Mexico drying weather.
When I was a single mom in college I washed clothes in the bathtub with the stomp method of agitation. And yes, I developed very strong hands and arms. Fun times! (No)
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the very same thing as above comment. Think how strong your arms & hands will be.
ReplyDeleteLinda
My washer's transmission bit the dust the other day, but before I cognizated that it was, in fact, the whole &*%^$ transmission, I put $117 of bearings in it (myself).
ReplyDeleteIf you're lacking both agitation and spin, my recent experience would suggest it's the transmission, which in our case turned out to be more expensive than a new washer.
I went through Sears Hometown. It wasn't quite $500. But then the useless parts were also an expense. So.
And all this during this fun Nebraska blizzard-flood-mud. Awesome.
Best of luck.
Karen.
My great-grandma had 13 kids and often lived with no running water. I've often thought of the misery of things like dishes, bath day and, yes, laundry (can you imagine bed sheets for 13 by hand? It'd be a two-day job.). All that hauling and heating and that's just to get ready to start with the washing. I am immensely grateful for running water and a washing machine.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be amazed how clean clothes can get if you just drop them on the floor of your shower with a drizzle of laundry detergent (or not, if you're not into soap) and walk on them and smush them around with your feet while you shower, then rinse them out before you get out, wring as well as possible and hang them to dry. Obviously this is not a good strategy for your youngest children, but the older ones can easily do their own laundry in this manner. And yes, I might be a redneck. But if it works ... and the washer doesn't ... and the laundromat is inaccessible ... and you really need some clean pants ... As an added bonus, your feet get really really clean. :)
Poor you! BTDT, in 2017, for several months. It was awful.
ReplyDeleteI used an old fashion toilet plunger to smush things around. I had to add on to the handle to make it longer. It worked better, for cleaning, than anything else I tried.
For wringing, I would wrap one article of clothing/towel/whatever around a pole and twist. Still hard but it got out 10 times the water of hand-wringing. Just had to remember to go easier on the clothing to not stretch them out. Really damaged my shoulder over time but it got the job done. Before I figured that out, two of use would wring, each grabbing an end and twisting.
Belts or bearing--it doesn't look good for the future of that washer. The washer here stopped agitating; belts were replaced, but with bad bearings, the washer just failed again.
ReplyDelete