Will Rogers said, "We are all ignorant, just in different subjects." I may be ignorant in more subjects than most people, because I just don’t need to know. My case in point is portable washing machines. I had no idea that they were still available, nor that a need exist. Browsing today, I saw an ad for such an appliance. Back in the day, we had portable washing machines because they were the only kind one could have.
I do remember helping to push a huge wringer type washing machine to the kitchen sink to hook it up to a hose to do the family laundry. And, we had wash tubs for rinsing the soap out. If this sounds like a lot of work, it was.
First you had to get the dang machine full of scalding hot water. Then you washed the white clothes. Usually you added about ten gallons of chlorine bleach to kill what ever the hot water didn’t get. Then you ran the clothes through the wringer, sometimes more than once to get the water and some of the soap out. Next was the first rinse tub which you poke the clothes around by hand. And the final rinse was a repeat, except you would ring out the water by hand.
The not portable dryer was about fifty feet of rope strung between two post where you would hand the laundry using clothes pins. This was true solar power clothes drying. Once you had the first load drying, you started the process over again - using the same water.
I suppose that some apartment dwellers, college students and perhaps a few others need portable washing machines. I hadn’t thought about it. I didn’t need to know.
If I had to go back to the process of the old days, I would just wear my cleanest dirty clothes
PMO
©2013
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