Day 22 #100DaysOfOldDays

Where would we be without our automatic washing machines? I remember when they first came on the scene but my mam waited until 1995 before getting one. Until that she carried on pulling the twin tub washing machine out of the cubby hole.

It was called a twin tub because it had two compartments; one for washing the clothes and one for spinning them. A top loader. She’d fill up the washing part with hot water (the machine didn’t heat the water) add the washing powder, and press the button. The clothes tumbled round one way and then the other.

Then mam would use huge wooden tongs to pull them from the washer tub across into the spinner tub. Close the lid and off it would go. It made such a racket, hopping off the floor like a kango hammer. As it spun the clothes, the water through a pipe that went from the machine to the sink.

When there was no drying outside the clothes were hung on a line in the kitchen over the hot range and on a clothes horse.

And then she had days when it wouldn’t work. Those were the days when you kept out of her way!

It was such a chore. I don’t know how she put up with it for so long.  

But she always reminds me that the twin tub was a luxury in comparison to the days when she scrubbed the clothes on a washboard with a big bar of sunlight soap. She said it used to cut the knuckles of her. Rinsed them in clean water and then fed them through the wringer. Imagine all the washing in big families. One thing was for sure, you didn’t change your clothes every day back then!

Lucy’s drawing of a washboard in a bath of water.