Lovely Laundry ~ Remembering Grandma's Way

Today, Colleen is hosting the first Simply Lovely Fair of the Spring ~ the topic this week is Laundry. How can we make laundry less of a dreary chore and more of a pleasant endeavor?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I manage my household, and as I do, I find myself remembering the way my grandmother ran her own home. She probably didn't think about it half as long or hard as I seem to - and yet, her home was tidy, clean and comfortable. She was always on top of things, and her family's needs were always met. I can stand to learn from her example in so many areas, but for today, I'll focus on her laundry; she had quite a way with it ...

I happen to love doing laundry, though I do find it hard to keep up with. I love the way good, fresh laundry looks, smells and feels, and I love the way it serves my family. Laundry done well means drawers full of clean clothing, closets hung with neatly pressed clothes, and beds made with sweet-smelling linens. It brings comfort in both the physical and emotional sense of the word. Plainly put, when the laundry is caught up, my maternal psyche can rest. :)

When I was young, I watched my grandmother work absolute magic with laundry. She had a way - a system I guess - of keeping up with it all. First of all, her laundry never piled up. As with the rest of her household, things in the laundry area were kept tidy and running smoothly. The area was in the basement - a small, but efficient space. The ironing table was always set up, ready to go, just beneath a clothesline where Gram would line dry many items inside. (There was also an outdoor clothesline just outside the cellar door.) In one corner stood the freezer (filled with berries, pie crust and applesauce, etc.) and in the other stood a utility sink, where items could be rinsed out and where Grandpa could wash his hands when he came in from the garden. A tall set of shelves held the few items she needed for laundering. She didn't experiment much - she didn't need to. She didn't waste a lot of time looking for the perfect thing, she went with what was useful and good and made it work for her. And for her it was a box of powdered Tide and Bounce dryer sheets. I think there was some kind of stain remover, and I remember a Fels Naptha bar as well as a glass shaker for ironing. I have that glass shaker on my shelf now - of course I have no idea what to do with it. ;)

Her linen closet (a thin, tidy cupboard in the hallway) was a sight to behold: neatly stacked medical supplies, bedding, towels and paper goods. So much was stored here, and yet never too much. Her bedding was most notable, though. I never slept so well as I did in a bed made up by Gram. In the summer, the sheets were cool and smooth as silk; in the winter, the flannel blankets were soft as butter.

I never gave any of this much thought until I was older; as a child you take all these things for granted. But when I was first married, and learning how to manage a home on my own, my grandmother would often take home a pile or two of our laundry to do for us. She would return it to us, and we would hardly recognize our own clothing! It was so clean, soft and smelling as fresh as a new spring day ...

So I began to pay attention. :)

Here are a few notes on laundering, a la my Grandma's ways ~

~ Never over-fill your washer.

~ Check clothing before adding to washer (empty pockets, etc.)

~ Let the washer fill up a third of the way; then add your detergent.

~ Once detergent has worked into the water, then start adding clothing.

~ Don't let clothes sit in the washer; set a timer if you need to.

~ Shake out each piece of laundry before tossing it in dryer.

~ Hang what you can on a clothesline (inside or out).

~ Don't let clothes sit in the dryer; retrieve and fold them promptly.

~ Choose your clothing and linens wisely; you don't need a lot. Buy well made items that will wash well and last.

Now, here are a few notes about where my laundry can stand improvement:

~ We need to make less of it. I only have three children and yet it seems like I do laundry for a football team! (Of course they're boys and I think boys count twice when it comes to laundry.)

~ To make less laundry we need to own less clothing. I must find time to weed out our clothing and fill bags for donation. We also need to be better about addressing clothing more responsibly at night; if something is not dirty, it should be put away properly, not left underfoot or in a pile.

~ Our clothing and linen storage areas really need to be overhauled ~ closets, bureau drawers and seasonal storage boxes. This is a (huge) topic for another post.

~ I need to be better about keeping up with the laundry process. I tend to start laundry and then not complete the cycles. So, all too often I have laundry that needs to be rewashed or laundry that sat in the dryer and got cold and wrinkled. I go back and forth on how to address this. I sometimes think doing one load each day of the week is the ticket, but I feel maybe one or two full laundry days a week is better - days I know we'll be home and I can keep up with each part of the process. Using the kitchen timer is so helpful, and having an area to spread out and fold, too.

When I'm feeling brave, I will photograph my laundry area, a project in progress. Bill is re-doing the kids' playroom, and at the same time we are re-vamping the laundry and pantry areas. It will be nothing fancy or formal, but simple and efficient (and lovely) - just like Gram's I hope. :)

If you're looking for more thoughts and ideas on laundry, I hope you will stop by Colleen's Fair today! I know I will be there later, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a pencil in the other - ready to add tips to my list. :)

Happy Friday, my friends!

Comments

[Susan]

I loved your post on the Laundry.

I am hosting the Loveliness of Spring Fair featuring Flowerpots over at my Attaining Virtue blog. So please send me links with posts and pictures of your spring flowers or send me an e-mail with your entry. Reflections on beauty and new life are encouraged and are also a personal need of the hostess.

The Fair begins tomorrow on April 16. So please let's celebrate the visit of our Holy Father with an April shower of flowers.

It is Colleen's birthday (http://footprintsonthefridge.typepad.com) on April 16. So you can wish her a happy day as well.

God bless you!

Susan Brennan

[Christie Groth]

Laundry is one of my joys too! When my eldest was home going through 2-3 outfits per day, I washed at least one load per day except Sunday. 2-3 on Monday. 2-3 on Friday's because the teenager needed every single piece of his favorite clothing clean for the weekend and dh needed uniforms clean. Saturday washing was for bath & kitchen items. I like to do laundry first thing in the morning. I fold and hang them fresh out the dryer and at the end of the day the things that were line dried get tossed in the dryer to freshen them up and everything gets put away at once.
I actually just talked about this last week and I TOO need to go through and rid my family of the some of the clutter in our closets.
Good luck and God Bless you for your blog. You are an inspiration.
Christie

[Cay]

Great article, Dawn.
I'm going to think of Grandma now when I laundry. :)

[Deb]

Oh, you'll have to look at Jen's blog at http://www.sailblogs.com/member/marihalojen/

My husband does our laundry, but I'll keep this in mind in case he goes on strike.

Deb

[Cheryl]

Your Grandma's system and basement sounds exactly like my Memere's. I, like you, don't think that they analyzed things like we moms do nowadays. They just did it.

[Mary Ann]

I think the shaker is to sprinkle some water on the garment to be ironed, before the days of electric steam irons.

My grandmother washed her laundry every day on a washboard in her kitchen sink. She had, at one time, a husband, five children and her mother and sister. She had a pair of cast iron irons, which she heated on the range. She kept up the laundry until she was ninety. And, unless you think of her a some country farm wife: she spent her whole life in Brooklyn.

[cousin Amy]

I remember getting hand me downs from you that your grandma would wash before giving to me and I always loved the smell of the clothes. I can still remember that smell.

[lisa]

What a wonderful image of your Grandma and her laundry space. And great tips! It's always so pleasant visitng you, Dawn.

[Susan]

Thanks Dawn. I love all of the tips.

[Kimberly]

Lovely! I wish our HOA hadn't outlawed clotheslines...I'm off to rotate the loads right now. Have a nice weekend.

[Colleen]

Dawn--Thanks for the post. The fair is up at my place. I hope it makes you smile ;-)

[Stacy]

I loved sprinkling the clothes before ironing, when I was little! Our bottle was plastic, though. My mum started me on my dad's handkerchiefs, moved on to pillowcases, and then up from there!
Just remembering the whole smell of the laundry ...takes me back. I can never quite duplicate it here.
And my mum's iron was indestructible. We go through an iron every 2-3 years now!

[Lindsay]

Yes, my mom would put the dampened laundry in the refrigerator, too. But usually only in the warmth of summer or if she couldn't get to it right away. Kept it from getting mildewed.

[Lindsay]

Oh my, Dawn, how old I feel! Your Grandma used Bounce dryer sheets? My Grandma and my mother had (electric)wringer washers and everything got hung up outside. Sometime in my childhood we eventually got an automatic washer and a dryer.

Your sprinkler bottle is for "dampening" the laundry. On the evening of laundry day, after everything had been taken down from the line and brought inside, the things which had to be ironed were spread in layers on the kitchen table. The top layer was sprinkled with clean water from the "dampening bottle." (My mom had the new-fangled invention, the dampening bottle; my grandma could sprinkle evenly by scooping water with her hand from a bowl.) Then that article of clothing was rolled up tightly and placed in "the dampening bag," a big plastic bag with a zipper. When all the pieces had been dampened, rolled up, and put in the bag, the bag was zipped shut and put away until the next day. Overnight the sprinkles spread into uniform dampness which made ironing so much easier, especially in the days before steam irons. I still dampen clothes myself, especially 100% cottons, but these days I use a plant sprayer. Wonder whatever happened to that dampening bottle?

[Melinda Loustalot]

Hi Dawn -- was your grandmother's glass shaker some kind of bottle with a shaker top with really small holes? My mom had a coke bottle with some kind of metal shaker top with minuscule holes that she used to "sprinkle" the clothes because her iron didn't have steam (this was back in the '60's)She also used it to "sprinkle" the clothes to keep them from drying out in the frig -- yep, the refrigerator -- I remember she used to take the white clothes (it may have been all the clothes, I just remember the whites) out of the washer and roll them up in a big ball in a white sheet (of course, all sheets WERE white back then) and put them in the frig until she could get to ironing them, which was a BIG process due to it all being 100% cotton. When she'd take them out the next day or so to iron, she'd "sprinkle them" to get the wrinkles out and freshen them up. At least that's what I remember from a little kid's point of view. Hope this makes some kind of sense.

[Angel]

Personally, I think boys should count three times when it comes to laundry -- especially when it's Mud Season! LOL I think everyone but Katydid has gone through at least 3 changes of clothes every day this week. Boys and mud...

It was a lovely post, Dawn. Thanks for sharing your memories.

[Christi]

I could stand to improve my laundry routine, too. Like you, I tend not to get through all of the cycles. And if it all gets washed and dried, then I either don't get them out of the dryer - or fold them and don't get them put away.

Thanks for this peek into your Grams' home - inspiring!