Washing day
Laundry day with eight presumed domestic servants of a stately home in an unidentified location;
Photo in cabinet size , between 1880 and 1890
The washing day was set before the availability of washing machines to clean all laundry .
The frequency of the wash day was based on the type of textiles: every one to two weeks the “little wash” (shirts etc.) and once a month the “big wash” (pants, skirts, bed linen etc.). It took a day or two. It was often done on fixed days as a community action by the women of a family or house community, or on days when no other important work (haying, harvesting) was due or could not be carried out due to bad weather. Unavoidable work was reduced as far as possible in favor of washing, for example by not cooking, but merely heating up a prepared meal (e.g. stew ). In urban apartment buildings, the use of the communal laundry room , the attic used for drying laundry, etc. was often regulated by the individual tenants according to a precise plan.
Course of the washing day
To wash
All the laundry was soaked in hot soapy water the evening before, the white and colored laundry as well as the work clothes were soaked and washed separately. First the white laundry was washed; it was boiled and mashed, then taken out of the kettle / pot and washed in the tub with curd soap by rubbing, tumbling and swirling. The rest of the laundry was then washed in the same water, textiles made of wool last (here fine wool fibers can remain in the water). Finally, the laundry was rinsed and then wrung out or lacking .
Since the soap dissolves better in soft water, it was often softened with the help of (beech) ash ("the beech"). The laundry was put in the tub , the ashes (a large, fine sheet) spread over it and sprinkled with sifted ashes. The hot water was then poured over the cloth with the ashes.
Drying and ironing
The laundry was hung outside on linen or dried lying on the lawn. In bad weather it had to be dried in the laundry room itself or in the oven. The dry laundry was ironed or hot ironed. Men's shirts and collars were strengthened so that they could be worn for several days.
Innovative washing aids
The first pioneering relief was the first automatic washing powder in 1907 : it relieved housewives of the strenuous and time-consuming rubbing, swiveling and tumbling of the laundry.
At the same time, spin-dryers emerged that made wringing out or mangling superfluous.
These innovations, and not least urbanization, also contributed to the fact that the work of washing was shifted from public perception to the household.
See also
literature
- Jutta Brendow, Gerhard Kessler, Gisela Meyer: The big laundry . Booklet accompanying the exhibition of the same name in the Bad Wildungen Kurmuseum, Kurmuseum, Bad Wildungen 1998, ISBN 3-87077-059-7 .
- Elisabeth Helming; Barbara Scheffran: The big laundry . An exhibition of the Rhineland Regional Association, Rheinisches Museum, Brauweiler, Rhineland, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7927-1057-9 (= Guide and publications of the Rhenish Open Air Museum and State Museum for Folklore in Kommern , Volume 34 / Writings of the Rheinisches Museumamt . Volume 42) .
- Barbara Orland: Do the laundry. Technical and social history of home laundry care. rororo 17736, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-17736-6 (At the same time dissertation on the technical and social history of domestic laundry care in Germany since the 18th century , at the Free University of Berlin 1991).
- Gudrun Silberzahn-Jandt: Washing machine: on the change in women's work in the household . Jonas, Marburg 1991, ISBN 3-89445-119-X .
- Günter Wagner: Detergents: Chemistry, Environment, Sustainability. 4th, completely revised and expanded edition, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-527-32678-5 .
