Thursday, October 18, 2007

Laundry


The other day I wrote about ironing. Today it's laundry. I love doing laundry. Weird, I know, but there's something about doing laundry that I just really love. I hate cleaning bathrooms. I hate doing dishes. But I love doing the laundry. Especially when I can hang the clothes outside to dry. I actually don't even have a clothes line, but in the summer I lay my wet clothes out on the top of the hot tub, across the backs of lawn chairs and along the wooden benches lining our back patio. The hubby doesn't really like crispy towels, but whatever!

When the kids were small, my hubby used to try and help me out once in awhile by doing the laundry for me. It just drove me crazy. Everything would get crammed into the machine and nothing would be sorted. Pockets wouldn't be checked, and socks would go into the machine inside out. I always told him I appreciated the help, but if he really wanted to help me there were plenty of other things he could do, just leave the laundry to me!

When I was a kid and we lived in Iowa, my grandparents lived in an old house in town. I would estimate that the house was probably 100 years old. There was a basement, like most houses in the Midwest have, and if memory serves me right, it was made out of stone and was white-washed. (Do I remember right, Dad?) Anyways, my grandma had a wringer washing machine and I used to love to help do the laundry, although that only happened on rare occasions. She would fill up one of the big tubs and put the dirty clothes and soap in it and it would churn around and around washing the clothes. Then she would turn on the ringer and we would run the clothes through the ringer into the other tub, filled with rinse water. Again it would agitate and bounce around, rinsing the soap out of the clothes, and then the process would repeat itself...back through the ringer and into an empty tub. I don't think my grandma ever had a dryer. It seems like all of her laundry got hung out on the clothesline, summer or winter.

I have a really nice front load Maytag washer and dryer. They're really good machines and I really like them, but sometimes I think it would be fun to have a wringer washer like my grandma had.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your picture is so appropriate! Grandma Heinrich had a Maytag washer like one of those in the picture. And she always called it her "Maytag", never her washing machine.

anita said...

i remember that, that's why I picked that picture!

.justin said...

laundry doesn't do it for me like ironing did.

not as "hands on"...





maybe i should buy a washboard!

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh laundry is the worse..I hate it!!!!and I run a laundry mat...lol

kristi said...

I enjoy doing laundry and even folding it, but for some reason I hate putting it away.
Its even more fun now that I make my own detergent. :) Is yours still working well for you? I love mine!

anita said...

works great and it's SO cheap! oh, and justin, i have an old washboard you can borrow if you want! lol