laundry day

Laundry day used to be on Monday. All the women in the neighbourhood would get up early and start the process of boiling clothes and ribbing them on a washboard. Besides pride to have it hanging on the line outside before breakfast, there was always the regular work that needed doing.

Right now I do laundry almost everyday. Because my dryer is on the blink, I'm doing one load once a day, so everything has time to dry on the line in my basement.

It is not as much fun as hanging it out of doors, where the sun and wind catch the t-shirts, trying to take them up into the endless depth of the sky, to give them that indescribable smell that reminds me of the history of laundry day. But there is satisfaction in the action, clipping shirts and towels on the line to dry.
I also noticed that ironing is easier with air-dried clothes than when they come out of the dryer.

(A very mundane subject, laundry, but a very necessary job after Adam and Eve were sent away from Eden. Just imagine the extra time I will have in heaven, not having to do laundry! Or do our white robes need washing, too?
How much extra time do I need in eternity?
What would I do with extra time? Plant a few more shrubs in the garden?)

My first memories of laundry are of my mother boiling the whites on top of  a kerosene stove, which she only used for that purpose. It had this peculiar smell, both the kerosene and the boiling, soapy water. After washing the clothes in sudsy water, they went through the wringer. Then they had to be rinsed in cold water, and again, put through the wringer, before hanging it outside to dry. Drying sometimes took days, in our wet country of the Netherlands.
The day might start out nice, but then when the clouds rolled in: " Hurry, hurry, quick, get those almost-dry-clothes off the line!"

When they were nearly dry, it was easy to iron them, and almost everything got ironed. There were the button shirts for Sunday-go-to-meeting times. The  hankies, made from old cotton shirts, and the dish towels. I've heard of women ironing underwear, but my mother never went that far. Even our towels didn't get ironed, unless they were still slightly damp, then they needed to be ironed dry before they were put in the closet. She folded them length-wise in three sections, and then in three again. I just fold them end to end twice, and then in three. Easier, I think. Strange, that it even mattered then.

At four I started with ironing hankies, then progressed to tea-towels at age five. It never became a regular job though. Polyester, the new fabric on the market, did not need ironing, or boiling for that matter, and it dried a lot faster on the line, too. The wringer was replaced by a spinner, and polyester was almost dry when it came out.

Today I still iron cotton hankies and tea-towels. Plus table-cloths, especially after Christmas. It's mostly all flat stuff, so easy going, and very satisfying. There is an occasional shirt, though, that has not been replaced yet with a no-iron shirt.

Now I'm back to on-line-drying, and thankful for the washing machine. When dishcloths don't get clean I put them all in a big pot on top of the stove, and boil them with some washing soda: same peculiar smell, but also same cleanness!
And the memories...