This is the Way We Wash The Clothes

 March 2006

Oh, the virtue of it all. The laundry is washed, dried, folded, and put away. I'm free from that drudgery for a few days until it piles up again. But at least, I have a washer and a dryer. I'm grateful for them! 

We bought our first washer and dryer shortly before Keely was born. A fellow who was moving sold us the set cheap. It was apartment-sized --the washer hooked up to the sink faucet, and both the washer and the dryer could be plugged into ordinary wall outlets. It was wonderful not to have to drag the laundry to the laundromat anymore.

Then we went to Germany for five years and our washer and dryer went into storage. When we came to Kentucky, the little washer refused to wake from its long hibernation. It wasn't worth fixing, so we went to Sears and bought a Kenmore washing machine which served us faithfully for 15 years with only a couple of visits by the repairman. 

Though its mate died, the apartment-sized dryer still worked when we came back to Kentucky. We used it for about a year, until one day I put too much heavy wet clothing into it and burned up its motor and the wall outlet it was plugged into. 

I had already rigged a clothesline between a couple of trees, so I dried the laundry outside for the next five years. Money was tight and a dryer wasn't an absolute necessity. I soon became well acquainted with the joys and frustrations of depending on a clothesline.

Clothing dried outside usually has a wonderful fresh-air scent. However, there were times when our neighbor spread manure in his field, and any clothing hung out to dry picked up the stench. And while laundry dried quickly on a warm, breezy day, it didn't dry at all in rainy weather.

Hanging the clothes was a pleasant outdoor diversion on a warm day, but on a winter day, even with gloves, my hands ached with cold before a full basket of wet laundry was pinned to the line. 

Dennis decided that the clothesline between the trees looked tacky, so he fixed a proper clothesline with metal poles, on the south side of the house where the north wind wouldn't be so bitter in cold weather. That turned out to be a bad idea. We have a wood stove that we use in the winter, and in the clothesline's new location, the laundry picked up a strong smoke smell all winter.

We eventually got a dryer (a Kenmore.) I'm grateful for it, but I still hang clothing outside sometimes when the weather is nice. I don't have a clothesline anymore, but I do have a chain that I use for clothing on hangers -- one hanger per link in the chain. The hangers can't slide together and the wind can't blow them off the chain. If I put the clothing on hangers as soon as the washer stops, most of it dries nearly as wrinkle-free as if it had gone through the dryer. 

My Mennonite neighbor, Kathryn, is dedicated to hanging her laundry outside on the clothesline year-round, though she has a dryer for emergencies and long rainy spells. Her clothesline is a long loop strung around a pulley on each end. One pulley is on the porch and the other is mounted high on a tall pole far across the yard. She stands on her porch to pin on the clothes, then pulls the line through the pulleys to move the clothing out into the air high above the yard.

Last year, the Kenmore washer started having some problems and we decided to get a new washer. I researched washing machines in the $500 range, and finally decided on a General Electric with a stainless steel basket. I am satisfied with it; my only complaint is that it is noisier than the Kenmore. 

My conclusions about all this? A washer and a clothesline are better than going to the laundromat, and a washer, a dryer and a clothesline are as good as doing your own laundry can be. But a laundry maid would be the best of all.