Ok but how did the Edwardians WASH these dresses?
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- Опубліковано 12 сер 2022
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Notes:
[1] A Competent Committee of Home-makers and Physicians, ed. Home and Health; a Household Manual Containing Two Thousand Recipes and Helpful Suggestions on the Building and Care of the Home in Harmony with Sanitory Laws. Internet Archive. Mountain View, CA, Portland, OR.: Pacific Press Publishing Co., 1907. archive.org/details/homehealt....
[2] (This image seems to have first appeared online in a Blogspot post, so take it with a pinch of salt.) British Closed Range. Online Image. Victorian Interiors and More. Accessed August 12, 2022. victoriandecorating.blogspot.c.... (NOTE: There is a second image mistakenly labelled [2] beginning at 04:28 which is cited below [4].)
[3] Click Americana. How People Used Vintage Washboards, Wringers & Other Old-Fashioned Laundry Equipment Years Ago. November 11, 2020. Online image. Click Americana. clickamericana.com/topics/hom....
[4] Home Washing Machine & Wringer. 1869. Lithograph Print. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/resource/pga.03845/.
[2 (second appearance)] Bailey Wringing Machine Co. c. 1870-1900. Miami University Libraries - Digital Collections. www.flickr.com/photos/muohio_....
[5] Bushnell, Joseph P. What to Do and How to Do It; a Home Manual, Treating of the Home and Its Interests, the Culinary Art, Health and Its Requirements, the Farm and Its Activities, Things Worth Remembering, Miscellaneous Information, Etc., Etc., Etc. Internet Archive. Chicago, Ill.: Home manual publishing co., 1909. archive.org/details/whattodoh....
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Soundtrack:
"Simple Pleasantries" by Arthur Benson
"By the Border" by Lama House
"Tiny Butterflies" by Ofelia Moore
"A Box of Happy Memories" by Ofelia Moore
"Odd Behaviour" by Arthur Benson
"Toss Me the Tomatoes" by Raymond Grouse
"In Our Days" by Raymond Grouse
"I Have a Plan, Mr Norton" by Arthur Benson
"Rotation Begins" by Arthur Benson
"Prescient" by Howard Harper-Barnes
"In the Wizards Home" by John Abbot
I often like to stop and think about how thankful I am to have a washing machine, a refidgerator, and clean water delivered directly into my house via tap. Those things make life so much easier.
This is part of why I love studying history; it absolutely does help us to appreciate the nice things about the present! ♥️
Hot showers! I regularly thank God / the responsible person for the invention of hot showers! :)
I’m DEFINITELY not going to back sass my washer for not getting out the one stain ever again
Slightly less important but I think about how grateful I am for my toothbrush and toothpaste so frequently
@@PossiblyAlena dental care in general…
I found myself actually talking back to you, Bernadette, in my Grandmother’s voice… My Grandmother was a part of Australia’s Stolen Generations; an Aboriginal child whose skin was lighter coloured. She was placed as a housemaid in a European household as a young child (6 years old). She grew up with very strong opinions about “washing day”; including which dress to wear on washing day (the oldest one made of the most worn out fabric). She died in 1979, but not before I could be taught the ‘proper way’ to launder. And I still make my own laundry detergents from her recipes; grate a stick of pure soap into boiling water, remove from the heat and gently combine 2 cups of washing soda and a little essential oil of a desired fragrance (according to her, lavender for haberdashery, eucalyptus or ti-tree for ‘mens shirts’, sage for ‘ladies cloths’ and rosewater or orange water for summer dresses) I still use a few drops of the oils, but only as a final rinse. Stain removal and washing was not done properly just by soaking the garment in water/ chemicals. It needed to be agitated, by hand if item was especially delicate, but stained hems and underarms would be (gently) rubbed against a washing board with liberal applications of the chosen stain remover, and well rinsed before the next step.
And yes! Never Ever boil one’s delicates! My Grandmother always believed the mangle was in fact better than a washing machine. It’s actually pretty easy to hand wash most clothes and linens, but getting them dry could be much more problematic. Items would be flattened out, and put through the mangle to remove excess water. Delicates or items being starched were always placed flat between white towels or linens, mangled, and then pressed, initially with only a warm iron to remove creases. If the item seemed to be drying too quickly one should gently sprinkle clear water on the area, and keep ironing.
Delicate items not requiring starching would be dried by laying item flat over a raised rack. All other items would be dried by hanging over a shaded rack and then placed in the late afternoon sun for a final airing…
Blueing the load only required a very small amount of blueing medium, well dissolved in the rinse water. (Although at boarding school in the 80s, we used to regularly pour heaps of liquid blue in with our white school shirts, dresses and socks to make them go pale blue… because… boarding school?) (And home made laundry soap only needs a small amount, can be used in washing machine or handwashing, and is excellent for people who have sensitive skin… and leaves no residue.)
Happy washing day!
I make soap regularly, as well as using some of the ingredients she mentions, and I too was talking back to Bernadette in my 'lab rules' voice haha Some of these chemicals can be corrosive so it's best to have someone around who knows the whys and why nots!!! Clear water rinse first before adding any chemicals to remove as much physical grime as possible. Add *very small amounts* first of any 'clothes questionable' chemical. For ammonia in that level of water - about a tablespoon is a good start. I got so scared for that dress, as the cotton fibers can stand years of washboarding, but may show signs of wear after just a few of these washes. Not to mention the wear on your lungs and skin just from the vapors / remnants, too much!! :)
Your washing knowledge is spot on ma'am, wonderful comment, thanks and cheers from the south
Thank you for sharing your familys knowledge with us
I really wish you could save comments, because I want to be able to find yours for further reference. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I learned a lot from your comment.
Thank you for this thorough explanation! I screenshot the whole comment to transcribe at a later date! I really wish there wash a modern book about laundering with guidelines, recipes and methods of the past applied to modern day readers/users.
My washer and dryer are both out of order and awaiting parts... Starting week four now. My husband's heavy jeans have gone to the Laundromat. My clothes have been hand washed and yes, it's not so much the washing, it's the drying that's the issue. I was thinking just yesterday that a wringer would be nice to have...
I’ve noticed a lot of people in these comments explaining how their grandmas taught them differently and I would like to highlight how CRITICAL that is! Part of the issue she has is that the book doesn’t record the “obvious” things that existed only in the memories of these people, but these comments show that those memories are still alive! We need to get these written and consolidated before the history is lost!
All my grandmother's recipes say cook in a hot oven until done. It was just assumed that everyone was taught basic life skills by their parents. Instructions were only for advanced projects
+
Literally this.
it's the same problem you run into with old cook books. The sources from the time all assume the person would know the basics already. Meanwhile the list of people who actually know how to do it grows ever shorter.
Most of these things that were taught to us by our grandparents (or great grandparents) were considered basic life skills and obviously measurements were not really a thing... Or so I was taught. You had to eyeball this amount of ingredient or have to remember this taste so you can have the specific household taste. It's quite hard. Hahaha
My grandpa refused to get my grandma a washer when my mom was younger since he didnt see the purpose of it when hand washing all day worked fine... then grandma had to stay in the hospital and he did some of the laundry and quickly decided to get a washer🤣
Can we just take a moment to aknowledge Bernadette's courage to go and EXPERIMENT WITH A GARMENT THAT TOOK MONTHS TO CREATE!
Girl, if we ever have to send someone into Mordor, it will be you!
I SAID THE SAME THING. O.O
I will be her Sam because she deserves a servant to keep her safe and cook for her.
My husband overheard some of this and said, "I hope she's not washing something important or expensive."
True bravery... I would have been experimenting with scraps of fabric, in varying strengths of chemicals for a month!
Oh so much this, when I saw that lace I was pressed and stressed. Real gumption and resolve to be sure!
To add to all the labor: I inherited a letter that my grandmother's cousin wrote to her about their mutual great-grandmother, who lived from 1815 or so until 1901, moving from Montreal to upstate New York to Michigan. It's an outline of her children, who they married, and their grandchildren. Except for the second youngest, whose note only says "Scalded to death on washday, age 5."
All those great vats of hot water were a serious household danger.
Yes and many young children got fingers or hair stuck in the wringers.
@@spoonoftheuniverse7233 I resemble that remark. My mother used one for a short time in the 60s. I still have the sense memory of that.
Yes, many children of all ages died in laundry day accidents.
Makes my mind reel with all the solutions I think they could have had, like fences and stuff like that, but I'm sure they thought of all that and it wasn't really doable. Life was just serious & dangerous, and wash day was one of the most dangerous.
Helped me figure out why my parents and grandparents acted so alarmed and angry about certain things we did in the sixties and seventies, they had grown up with wringer washing machines and scalding hot tubs of water over the fire. Everything had to be done carefully back then. Life required great awareness and responsibility, and yet still the dangers were there.
I have a tremendous reverence and respect for that, for all who suffered or were killed in household accidents, and how that changed the families and the individual lives afterward.
Safety is kind of one of my hobbies and interests areas, and I love to learn and think about it more all the time. Thank you for sharing your story.
@@bonnieprater5124 yes same here.
@@spoonoftheuniverse7233 My aunt has permanent tissue damage in her hand due to a childhood wringer accident.
While doing the family history, my grandparents found an article from the 80s or 90s about a distant relative of ours who had just turned 103. They'd asked him, out of all the extraordinary things he'd seen invented in his lifetime (computers, modern medicine, spaceships, etc), which did he think was the most important... he said the washing machine. He remembered watching his mother wash their clothes on a washboard until her knuckles bled, and it was a miracle when the washing machine was invented.
Lovely man to think of the one thing which liberated his mother as being most important. That really shows love.
I spent a year without a washer and too poor to afford a laudrymat so washed everything in my tub in a similar way with modern soaps and it was a long, exhausting, sweaty endeavor that I do not miss. This video was interesting but also brought the nightmare back...thank the gods for washing machines!
In N. Indian villages women and maybe men wash clothes by hand on the cement and they rubbed parts with a bar of soap and rubbed the clothes together and rinsed as they sat or squatted to wash.
I did the same...listened to lots of podcasts 😂
Holy shit a whole year.. My washing machine broke down last year and I ended up washing by hand for a week, I already thought that was crazy lol. Respect to you my friend. I was lucky that it broke down in summer. I just took a big bucket of hot water outside, and I used sunlight soap and something that I used as a washboard to get the stains out. The first few pieces were fun to do but if you have to do a whole load that you'd normally put in the machine, it becomes tiresome quite fast. Definitely changed my perspective on a few things...
Mom scrubbed our clothes on a washboard every day, I've seen her fingers bleed.
To complain, there was no need.
At the highest electricity prices one full load cost me $0.15 at home, but a laundromat charges $12 for that!
These instructions are not restricted to Edwardian times; we learned all of this in school. As for washing machines, my mother was the first person in our village to have an electric washing machine because my father had to do the family laundry one weekend following my mother’s back injury due to a fall. He claims he had never worked so hard in his adultlife. My father was a coal and stone miner.
In his *adult* life? What did he do as a child?? /s
@@uselessgay2341 school /j
@@uselessgay2341 probably fight a bunch of monsters lmao
❤
Brilliant story! Thanks for the share.
You just neatly demonstrated why if an Edwardian household could afford it, they hired a washer woman to do the laundry.
The avg person wore clothes that concealed dirt and Stains better and could be washed without as much fuss. And they didn’t do laundry that frequently.
Once a week. Unless you wanted to have insects and skin diseases living on yourself.
I'm guessing that was a lot of families' first member of hired help!
And why, in photos and illustrations of that era, the washer women's arms and shoulders were so 💪 buff.
Throughout history the first thing people paid others to do when they got a bit of money - washing clothes...
I'm brazilian and to this day my mom uses some of those techniques to wash clothes, even the blue die (it comes in "pills" nowadays so you don't need to test how much of the blue stuff to put in, it has instructions on the proportion of water). Another thing is that with white garments you can soap it up reall ywell with coconut soap and leave it under direct sunlight for a few hours, the stains go away and the fabric is not harmed as far as I know. Thanks for this video.
I am Russian, and in 2021 I could not afford a washing machine for a year. I did it with my hands. Stressful and it takes a long time to dry unless you have very strong hands and can literally squeeze all the water out of the fabric.
Yes! Brazilian here and was going to comment that my grandmother uses the blue dye and the starch for white and special fabrics such as the household tea towels or embroidered one she did it herself. It was perfectly white and straight.
I LOVE laundry bluing. You can also mix it with shampoo/conditioner to get rid of brassiness in blond hair or in dog shampoo to help with yellowing fur on a white pet.
Wow! That's great knowledge to have! I lived in Mexico and many people hand washed their clothes at the river, beating it on rocks.
Some people had washing machine type tubs that they hand cranked to agitate the water.
We hand filled the washing machines.
Then we hung the clothes up to dry in the sun.
To iron it, we had to sprinkle it with water to dampen it, because we didn't have the synthetic fabrics as much as we do now.
Phosphate gives a blue white deceiving white
Analyzing these methods from a chemical and historical basis in comparison with modern washing techniques:(I SPENT A LOT OF TIME ON THIS PLEASE READ) The oxalic acid (while no longer used by many consumers do to handling and disposal concerns) is still widely used as a bleaching agent, primarily in paper production. Household ammonia is a solvent still used today in laundry and as a general cleaning agent, though you've most certainly seen it used in a certain blue glass cleaner. Soap, being basically unchanged since its discovery, is, of course, still widely used (though new additives for different applications). Washing Soda is still used in laundry as Bernadette mentioned and is a very strong base. You probably shouldn't use it as its effectiveness comes at the cost of risking degradation of your fabric. GASOLINE (the reason I wanted to write this)- Gasoline (along with naptha and similar fuels) is a very effective solvent and was one of the most popular dry cleaning agents from the 1840s up until the mid 1920s. This is, as was mentioned in the video, a very dangerous thing to use. Additionally, modern gasoline is VERY different to the gasoline of the turn of the century. If you wanted to be close to "period correct" while not risking your health and safety, a less dangerous derivative of gasoline was invented specifically to make dry cleaning safer and is called Mineral Spirits (aka White Spirit). It is still hazardous and is mainly used today as a paint thinner. The safest option would be the "Odorless Mineral Spirits" as it reduces the issues posed by inhaling gasoline vapors. Kerosene was also used instead of gasoline and while possibly slightly safer, you should not use it indoors. Gasoline, kerosene, and mineral spirits are all effective solvents that would serve as substitutes to modern dry cleaning agents. The reason gasoline would only be used in thin summer dresses is likely because of the danger of using it and that more delicate garments would not fare well against aggressive wet washing.
Thank you for your research! It is very interesting!
Wow! I think you just chemically smed up what I would practically need to know about clothes cleaning agents. Nicely done! Thank you 🍀✌️😎
Thank you for your insight! I just want to emphasise that "odourless mineral spirits" are still very much harmful even though the most toxic compounds are removed from them. They should only be used in properly ventilated spaces, just like all mineral spirits and turpentines, because inhaling the vapors cause damage to your nervous system.
*end of safety rant ;)
Thank you! I really didn’t want to do all the research on these!
I came in looking for a comment like this and got everything I dreamed of and more
So, I’m a guy in my twenties, mainly interested in games and memes, as far as my UA-cam catalogue goes, and somehow, for whatever unclear reason, the algorithm recommends me a video about washing vintage dresses. And you know what, I actually watched it all the way through, enjoyed it, and went ahead to check out other videos on the channel. Sometimes the threads of fate seem to weave in all the strangest ways and patterns, but I’m certainly glad this thread lead me here, and now I’m discovering a new interest for myself. So yeah, thank you for the work you do!
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.
Welcome, weary soul, to the time traveling Edwardian sector of the internet. Sit, rest, and enjoy a spot of tea, if that is your preference.
Same with me... this is very very weird. Yet her feminine calm looks, class and beauty added to the lack of sexualized looks, skin and tattos made me stay...
I'm in the same boat as you but I've always been fascinated with Edwardian times.
I am a man in late thirties, mostly checking out youtube clips on machining steel and woodworking. Somehow the algorithm got me to watch this aswelll. super interesting.
@@joaocosta3374 wth-
Something i learnt in my textiles class is to never pour the ingredients over the fabric directly, its better to first soak the fabric in water and also mix whatever you want to pour over it, for example the sal soda, with water first and then pour the water with sal soda before putting the fabric in it. That way it reaches the fibers equally instead of falling directly on some parts more than others. Idk if i explained myself correctly but yeah
Precisely! I was slightly horrified seeing her add chemicals directly onto the garment instead of dissolving them in water first, THEN adding the garment, and am amazed it didn't get destroyed!
@@tarbhnathrac2486I was screaming with horror some of the time. I'm a photographer with chemical handing skills plus a handspinner and dyer so I know quite a bit about these processes. There's reasons why life expectancy has improved dramatically in the last hundred years 😮
I was thinking that too. Also, she didn't wait till things actually boiled, like the soap. It may have made a difference. also you agitated your wash with a big spatula the entire time it was being washed and rinsed. Perhaps such delicate things not so much, though.
We forget that all that drying outside could end up for naut. all you needed was a bird dropping or dust blowing to ruin all your work.
My high school history teacher always pressed into us that the single most important invention for the advancement of feminism and women's liberation was the washing machine. If you had to care for a large household's laundry and cooking alone, then multiple days out of your week had to be planned around washing, and at least one had to be entirely devoted to it. With the advent of the laundry machine, women suddenly had far more free time in a week, and were less exhausted overall. Not only did this enable them to enter the workforce, it also enabled them to meet, organize, and protest for their rights. Watching this video really makes that argument feel more tangible, more easily understood. Thank you for your work! Especially with scoliosis, your back must have been KILLING you!
I wonder who invented the washing machine?
absolutely, of course, but, like all machines before and continuing, some people lost the only work that they were able to do. No benefits, so presumably starvation? No I am not a luddite - simply feel that we have had enough experience to realise that mechanisation has a cost that should be planned for and met.
@@gail101242 they done other jobs ... laundry woman could do any other job ...as that was already one of the hardest jobs possible... and the transition was very slow ... and by the way the job paid just so they do not starve and die young due to the hard work and chemicals... washing machine saved them ... as now they could do other jobs ... you see the rich once they did not have a use for them as washing machine find them other uses ... that is how society works ... rich keep people down to have them for their own benefit ... like today ... no difference .... just for some woman life now is better ...
Makes sense. I would guess that somewhere along the way, running water/plumbing helped as well. Getting water takes up a LOT of time for women and girls in some parts of the world.
While the washing machine made washing clothes easier, it also raised expectations regarding the amount of laundry a woman was expected to do. This is not an original idea of my own; I read it somewhere. To give you some idea of how things changed, our elderly landlady used to count the shirts my mother hung on the clothesline and ask "Why does Jack need so many shirts?" This was in Chicago, from 1947 to about 1954 or so, when the building was sold and we acquired a new landlady. Our landlady was actually a sweet person--she gave me a cloth doll I treasure to this day. But she hailed from an era when men wore the same shirt day after day and simply changed collars & cuffs. And she paid the water bill. My dad worked in an office downtown and he wore a different white shirt every work day, a casual shirt on Saturdays, a white shirt on Sunday morning. I don't remember what he wore on Sunday after he got back from church--possibly another casual shirt, if he didn't just roll up the sleeves of his dress shirt. So, a grand total of (gasp!) 8 shirts. Wash day in the early '50s was still a big deal. In our family, probably a load of white clothes, a load of colored, a load of towels, a load of sheets & pillowcases, a load of diapers. We lived on the second floor; the washer was in the basement. We didn't get a dryer until 1954, so everything had to be hung up outside or strung up somewhere inside on rainy days. Wash & wear didn't happen until 1957, which meant that a lot of that stuff had to be starched & ironed. Our apartment had white priscilla curtains (ruffles!) in a sheer fabric in 8 or 9 of the windows and these had to be starched & ironed. Worse, the air pollution in those days of coal heat meant that in a couple of weeks they were filthy again. Don't worry, my mother was much too busy to even think of washing those wretched curtains every two weeks!
I have a new appreciation for Caroline Bingley's line of: "Did you see her hem? 6 inches deep in mud. She looked positively medieval." Lizzie, have a care for all the work you're creating for your staaaaaaaff 😭
That’s exactly where my mind went too!
That line was the first thing that popped into my head. And now I'm just thinking of the poor Bennett family servants having to wash 5 young girls amounts of dresses. They probably hated Lizzie lol
@@ktmac8 there’s a book called Longbourn and it’s on the servants POV. They describe washing the dresses and how disgusting it is especially when they were on their periods.
@@007Julie I can only imagine. I mostly used cloth diapers when my babies were babies... and that was bad enough! Certain things need to just go in the toilet / trashcan in my book (although many people seem very happy with their Diva cups and period underwear and I honor that for them).
@@thebookwyrmslair6757 Diva cups are meant to be poured into the toilet. It's just the cup itself that you rinse out and reuse. Agree on the period underwear, though. Had a roommate who would soak hers in the bathroom, out in the open to see - and smell. I'm not easily disgusted, especially by blood, but that was too much for me.
One thing that I know about laundry is, that before the industrialisation it was common, to lay the washed and dried white clothes outside on the grass and leave them there in the sun for some hours to let them bleach so that they won't get yellow. When the people moved into town to work in the factories, there was no space for this, so the first companies started to sell washing powder with chlorine to bleach the white clothes.
You should hang your clothes to dry in the sun! The grass may stain your clothes forever.
That reminds me of a tidbit of knowledge! Beau Brummell would wear a fresh, white shirt every day and it was a not-so-subtle flex that he was rich enough to not only have a shirt for every day of the week, but also to have them sent to the country to be laundered. London was so dirty that country laundering was necessary so when laid in the sun to dry, no coal dust would settle onto the fabric and mute its gleaming whiteness. He was the most extra of the extra!
I think they stains were still in because you need to do mor "active" washing, you realy have to put the clothing in and out of the water and spin under water with your hands. I've learned this in my younger years from my grandmother who was born in 1907😊
Watching this gives us even more to be grateful about. I’m 80 years old. I remember dampening clothes, rolling them in a cloth and putting them in the fridge for awhile…then ironing them. Most of the garments were cotton. We loved when permanent press came out. These days, hardly anyone irons.
Really? I use to iron my clothes all the time. (Before the pandemic) I had no idea people just stopped doing it. To be honest it’s been a while since I’ve gotten out and I have forgotten how to effectively iron my clothing and I use to love doing it before school.
I wondered how to keep my white clothes white … every white outfits I have would get yellowish after a few wash :(
@@recuerdos2457Maybe you could try cold water. I once lived in a home with very hard water. It turned the whites yellow, but not if I used cold water.
I still do a bit of touch up ironing. I'm 72--didn't do any of that sprinkling, rolling, & cooling in the fridge, although I remember my mother doing it. Wash 'n' Wear came out when I was 7. I still had some clothes that were not that & more of them later when I inherited some of my mother's high school clothing: full cotton skirts, peasant blouses, pleated skirts in cotton & wool hand-made by my great-great aunt--as long as they didn't have boxy sleeves or shoulder pads I was happy to have them. When we lived in the apartment in Chicago (early '50s) we had white priscilla curtains with lots of ruffles on nearly every window. My mother would wash, starch, and iron them and hang them up and two weeks later, thanks to air pollution (lots of households still burning coal) they'd be grey again. She could not wait to move to the suburbs.
OH! another on of us!
i’m retired from 40+ yrs in trauma medicine, and watching you put your bare hands into all those chemicals, seeing you bend waaaay over into an indeterminate ammonia/water mixture… i truly appreciate your decision to leave out the gasoline! *. *YOUR LINGERIE DRESS CAME OUT SPARKLING BTW*
Not to worry, no skin contact was made with the oxalic acid or ammonia, and the room was vacated and ventilated during the ammonia soak!
@@bernadettebanner Did you learn from the whole „getting drunk on victorian shampoo vapors“ experience? xD
@@ageamiu8923 😁
nurse here - my hands had the same reaction
I'm just glad you didn't make your own ammonia ... I tried once (nerdy reenactor here) and the smell made me stop before it, um, aged appropriately. Not sure i would've been willing to use it!
In the 1970s when I was in high school, I was sent home to ask one of my parents what the most important technological advance during their lifetime whites. My mother, born in 1914 and the eldest daughter in a family of seven, said immediately and without hesitation “the washing machine”. And then she explain to me what “washday” meant in the 1920s. This is actually an excellent question to ask your elders, “what’s the most important technological advancement during your lifetime?” There are no wrong answers. Only extremely interesting ones inspiring cross generational conversation. (My answer at age 65? The desktop computer.)
For me being 21, I'd say it was modern phones. I don't think I would have gotten a job without my phone. I have apps that helped me make my resume and send it to people looking to hire people. I don't know how else you would do it other than going in person to different places submmiting applications and resumes.
electric rice cooker and slow cooker [age 50+] /laundry- iron service
I’m 37, so technically “the internet” would be a reasonable answer (I was alive but not using computers or participating in the early internet days), but I’m going to go with smartphones. I have a very clear understanding of life before and after they existed or became common.
My 7-ish year old nephew at the time once asked me if there were cars and television when I was growing up. I was born in '81. Nevermind that question astral projected me into another plane of existence for a brief moment, the very young really have little context beyond their immediate experiences. (My answer at 40 and experiencing my first pregnancy is medical technologies)
My mom has said that her mother said the same thing! The washing machine made women's lives so much easier! And my grandmother was the eldest of nine and basically raised most of her siblings so it sounds like she had a very similar experience to your mother. I only have one child and I am thankful that I can toss our clothes into a machine that does the work for me!
This is unbelievably hard. And I had no idea children were hurt in laundry day accidents. There's no way I would wear clothes that needed this much care. I think back and my grandmother made voile dresses for me with fine narrow lace then washed, starched, and ironed them. In the 40s she did this all for me and now that I know what it cost her, I really appreciate it.
Childhood mortality was from both disease and accidents - it's instructive to read obits and stats on this kind of thing in the 1800s. Horrific deaths in factories and inside the normal household from drownings, scaldings, burns from falling into fireplace or having their clothes set alight by a stray spark or candle or getting into toxic substances used for cleaning etc. Modern life is so much safer for children due to modern appliances, the improving legal regulation of appliances and furniture (I recall the days before sofas etc had their materials regulated and used to basically kill people by emitting highly toxic fumes in house fires) and building codes as well as the phasing out of real fires, and no need for weekly boiling tubs of water in kitchens etc. People who romanticise the old days usually have no idea how awful life was for so many, how cheap life was and how people evem in rich households died horribly all the time from stuff we don't even have to think about.
I'm sure there were more than enough women who found ways to cut corners and weren't perfectionists. This example in the video would have been the gold standard of laundering and probably not what everyone did down to every detail.
My great grandmother was a washerwoman in Detroit in this exact time period. I have some doll clothes handmade by her and thanks to your channel, I have REALLY appreciated all the work she did.
Was the tap water any better back then?
Man, I can completely understand why "laundry day" was its own dedicated day and why "laundress" was a full job! This makes me very grateful for the miracle of modern laundry devices. (I say that but I will also cheerfully use a no-rinse wool wash - either Soak or Eucalan - and either the sink or the tub to wash my handknits and even my more delicate non-knit garments, because I don't mind taking care to extend their longevity.) The rolling in a towel to squeeze out the excess is also how I get most of the moisture out of my knits!
As an aside, the mic clipped to a wooden spoon sent me into an extended gigglefit, and I lowkey hope "mic clipped to prop" will end up being a running gag in the Bernadette Banner cinematic universe.
One of my history UA-camrs regularly clips his mic to a white plastic spoon
“Mic clipped to prop” has Bernadette written all over it!!
Reminded me of Miniminuteman specifically, when he used a butter knife for his mic clip prop 😆
Kitchen utensils are just perfect because they have a handle and usually some kind of flat surface.
@@Shade_Dragon which one? Sounds like an entertaining guy
I love the spoon mic-holder too.
"Dry" cleaning used to depend on gasoline as it is a superior solvent. Working in a laundry was hot and very very dangerous work. Obviously the risk of fire was very high, so dry cleaners were equipped with steam filled pipes. In the event of a fire all the doors are closed and the steam is released. The steam displaces the air, starving the fire of oxygen, the only method they had for putting out a gasoline fire. Also, anyone still inside is flash cooked to death by the steam. Isn't laundry fun!
I’ve always said that laundering is dangerous!
This method is actually an up-and-coming tech for suppressing fires on large ships, now. It may someday replace both carbon dioxide and Halon.
😳
Modern cleaning fluids (Carbon tetrachloride and such) are extremely toxic and carcinogenic. Refer to Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base (North Carolina, USA). I lived just downhill from the ABC cleaner which poured it waste in a storm drain.
Note that there is actually a bit more chemical nuance for steam's role in putting out fires than replacing oxygen as aerobic combustion's main products are water and carbon dioxide as it is in fact the reverse process of aerobic photosynthesis where water is used as the source of hydrogen for carbon fixation.
As fire is a chemical reaction of which all chemical reactions naturally evolve towards an equilibrium state one extremely effective means to stop a chemical reaction from progressing is to dump the reaction products onto it as not only with displacing reactants help but you get to turn the balance of chemical equilibrium in your favor.
Steam effectively serves the same role liquid water would in putting out fires but with steam you don't have to deal with the fluid immiscibility issues where water and oils separate out that makes oil based fires so nasty to contain.
Also in this larger context conventional aerobic combustion is effectively an unregulated chain reaction cascade of the process of respiration in that both see the release of the solar energy that was stored into molecular bonds via carbon fixation.
My grandmother was a master of ironing - she used flat irons right up until she was in her 70s and no longer had somewhere to hear them. Everything was pressed perfectly. Sadly it became an issue in her 80s and 90s when we realised she was re ironing everything (including sheets) after the cleaner had been, and was falling and hurting herself.
The only thing I didnt see you do that my grandmother showed me to do when hand washing is grabbing the garment with both hands with the stain in the middle and rub them together. If it's a continuous stain such as the hem of your dress in its entirety then you would grab and rub until you find yourself at the starting point again...I hope this made sense lol thank you for this video...I enjoy these very much❤
my mom taught me how to do this too
"is this two thirds?" she asks, looking at the round soap that she could have cut into pie slices haha
🫠
@@bernadettebanner My Grandmother said they used to grate their soap before boiling it so it dissolved quicker. 🧼
People cut pies in thirds? I can never visualize how, I always cut through from one side to the other and get 4, 8, or 16 (depending on size/type)
@@TyroHuman not real pies, but she could have cut the soap into 3rds (or even sixths) so it’d be easier to tell how much to use
@@TyroHuman personally I usually cut cakes into twelve pieces (quarters first and then three pieces per quarter) since the degrees are easy to visualize bc of clocks… then you could just take eight pieces and you’d have two thirds… and smaller pieces that are easier to dissolve
Fun fact about blueing-it's sort of done by most modern detergents in the form of optical brighteners. Most modern detergents have fluorescent dyes in them, which makes them seem brighter to the eye because they absorb light from the sun and emit it back, so it literally glows a bit under the right kind of light radiation (usually in the UV spectrum, so sunlight, though it's not noticeable apart from looking bright and clean to the naked eye under most conditions). If you find your white clothing lighting up under a blacklight, you can probably thank your detergent. That's what makes those "whitest whites." You can find stories online of military people who have to switch to non-fluorescent detergents so their clothes are harder to detect by those using night-vision equipment.
Came to the comments looking for this!
I didn't know that fun fact about the military, though. The more you know... 🌈
Ya, I've heard that some people who hunt won't wash their outer layer of clothes because of this. Deer can see into the ultraviolet spectrum, so the freshly clean clothes would "glow" and give away the hunter's position.
I didn't know the exact science behind it, though, so thanks for posting this!
Oh, that also explains my pair of jeans that had some unfortunate-looking stains under blacklight!
@@theriverspath I hadn't heard about hunters before! It makes sense. To be more specific on the science, fluorescence happens when molecules absorb energy and then instead of releasing it in the form of heat or something, they release it in the form of light, usually emitting a lower-energy/longer wavelength. So something that absorbs green light might fluoresce yellow or orange, because those are longer wavelengths and lower-energy than the light absorbed. Since a lot of dyes that are invisible to the naked eye absorb in high-energy UV range, the lower-energy visible wavelength they fluoresce in is blue, and they're perfect for whites because the invisible dye+blue fluorescence makes them remain white and look bright.
@@theriverspath man that's so wild. Out here in Texas it's legal to feed deer and shoot them over a feeder so nobody bothers to do anything to hide themselves during a "hunt". They just get drunk in a deer blind while they wait for a buck to walk by.
If you haven’t watched the British series called the Victorian Farm or the following series called the Edwardian Farm, she tackles laundry. I found it weirdly fascinating and was never more thankful for my modern washer and dryer. My grandmother was an Edwardian woman and my respect for this strong example of womanhood grew exponentially!
oh yes. All their series, Middle ages, US 1800s ranch, pioneer, etc are so entertaining.
@@patmanchester8045 I don't remeber the 1800's US ranch or Pioneer ones, I do remeber a wartime one.
I love this! I find that people too often look back on the lives of our forebears within the contexts of our own modern bubble, causing us to either lament the horrible plight of women specifically, or some other demographic, omitting the shared hardships of everyone. Sure, there was plenty going on at all times of history all over the globe (continuing in some places today) where certain groups have had their difficulties far increased artificially by societal meddling, but when it comes to the average western woman of 100-300 years ago and even beyond, we leave their actual lives ignored to focus in only on the hardships of _womanhood._ I like instead to celebrate the strength and resilience that these women had to just get things done, care for their families in often grueling ways, and still go through life with smiles on their faces. We could learn a lot from them, people who endured so much and yet cared so little about it, when we today endure comparatively little and care so very much about it. We often forget that even if these women were offered the same privileges that we women enjoy today, life still would’ve been extremely difficult-and they likely wouldn’t have had the time to enjoy said privileges.
Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere but oxalic acid is used as wood bleach. It’s easy to find as a powder. And of course dissolve all your additives in the water before adding the garment(s) ofc because concentrated application can and will irreversibly damage fibers.
never touch oxalic acid with naked skin, oxalic acid will damage yr joints and deposit crystals like glass
@@mrazik131 and yes, read the packaging. Obviously. But this doesn’t negate the idea that you dissolve your whatever in wash water not pour it on a garment.
In rural Puerto Rico, my grandmother, slave descendant, washed the cloths in the river. My mother told me that it was a mother-children activity and every family was at the river, washing. It involved "jabon de castilla" and lots of physical force. The clothes were pounded against the rocks and let to dry over the large rocks around the river. The children were in charge of protecting the drying cloths from the wind and use small rocks to ground them. The sun was so hot that at the end of the day the laundry was dry. While doing that, women chatted and children payed.
Living in Puerto Rico and growing up surrounded by older people, I heard similar stories from my great grandmother Callita and my tía abuelas as well. Callita would also tell me about how the local women would make it a social event and that they would make large quantities of food and eat together as well. She was a woman that expressed very little emotion, but she would smile when telling that story.
My grandma also washed clothes in the river in rural Brasil, probably in the 50s when she was young.
I went to India in 2011 and saw women doing that and putting the clothes on bushes and such to let them dry.
My great grandmother did a similar way of washing her family's clothes when she was younger here in California in the late 40s.
@Bionick Toa Well dirt usually won't stain unless it's left to set into the clothes. So when your walking around and you walk through a puddle, the dirt stays on the cloth and sinks into the fabric. Washing in a river doesn't allow the dirt enough time to set into the clothes to stain. Even if the river was pretty muddy, you could use the river to get most of the stains out and simply rinse anything from the river out in a bucket of settled water.
White lab coats are required in my field. Discovering "bluing" has saved me so much money! Used to retire old coats for turning yellow, but bluing fixes it
For my lab coat and other white garments I use a sodium percarbonate-based cleaner.
Oxy-clean or whatever is available in your country.
It reacts with hot water to produce peroxide, which is just as whitening as bleach with less of the fabric-damaging part.
Sunlight on common laundry soapy water works every time. In Argentina children use white lab coats for school and we use sunlight to whiten them.
Most laundry powders with little blue dots already have a bluing agents. Hot washes and an oxygenation agent works well on chef whites. Sunlight works well on specific stains like tomato. But in being a chef you really need to become a laundry expert. Constant bleaching whites makes the stitching basically rot. It's crazy.
How do you do the bluing with the washing machine? Or do you do it as Bernadette did it? I have a couple of white shirts that would definitely benefit from it.
@@aloeme I would expect to use it along with/instead of fabric softener, which is added after the soap is rinsed out. A lot of fabric softeners are also blue.
Just a few comments: starching helps to keep the dirt off the fabric, so it makes sense to starch garments before wearing them outside. When washing soil-stained hems it helps to first brush out as much of it as you can, this helps with the washing process. Gasoline/ petrol is used in dry cleaning, so the dirt stains might give way when put though a cycle of dry cleaning. All pieces of advice from my late Granny, a seamstress born over 100 years ago.
I was about to comment about not having brushed off the actual dirt and dust. The process is for stains, not dirt.
The things we take for granted with modern appliances!
OH a lot of the process was in "l'assomoir" by Emile Zola! it's one of my favorite books and is mostly about the damage of Absinthe but follows the main character who is a launderer, professionally, so I remember her making mistakes such as too much or too little blueing, one of her clients she didn't like whose "shirts were so yellow she had to add so much blue" (kind of gross) and if I remember correctly, when she started to grow resentful of her husband, she thought the quantity of startching he liked on his shirt were basically "so stiff it made him look like an idiot" (I could be wrong on the details i haven't read it in maybe 7 years) so if you are interested in learning more about historical laudrying this book has a lot of the daily life around it! fair warning, since the main theme is ansinthe, an alcohol which brewing process accidentally created methanol on top of alcohol, so a poison, it deals a lot with addiction and the damage to the brain this alcohol did and has a lot of really heartbreaking scenes.
PS: I'm french and learned the word "scalding" from reading so TIL I learned its NOT pronounced "skAY-lding" so thanks lol (help)
PPS: for those interested, after the absinthe crisis which gave the alcohol the name "green fairy", as it was hallucinogenic, the recipe has been altered and absinthe is nowadays available, safely with no methanol. it tastes like licorice which i find kind of gross
I really have to reread this book
CAVEE-Ah-t???? and here I thought it was pronounced caveet 😭😭
Just ordered this book on audible. U made it sound interesting. Thank you 🇺🇸
Moi aussi je pensais à Gervaise ! One of my favorite books, but a very sad one indeed.
The starch stuff is interesting. I remember my grandmother mention a procedure called, well, in German, "stärken", which can translate to "strengthen", and mentioning a stiffness of certain kinds of clothing. But the german word for starch is also "Stärke", the same a strength. So I used to think that's what it was referring to - making the shirt stronger, and it kinda does. But it's actually referring to the starch used in the process. Funny.
About the blueing, many modern detergents have either blue particles in them (if they are powder detergents) or have some kind of blue dye (the liquid ones). It's supposed to have the same whitening effect on white garments and also it helps to visually restore dark colors: blue makes black garments that are turning brownish or greyish look more black. So it's not an outdated concept, most people don't realize that this step is a part of their everyday modern laundry routine.
I live near the factory that produced Reckitts "Blue", which was manufactured from 1850. I know people who remember the women leaving the factory literally blue from handling the stuff, so goodness knows what it did to their lungs.
@@tracythomas132 As they say “I’m blue, daba dee, daba die.”
My mom used to add a drop of indigo into the bucket of our white uniform shirts. To make the white whiter and prevent yellowing. It's still a common practice in the country where I live.
ive used bluing for white, upon learning about the other benefits i might begin using it again as i like wearing black.
in olden times, the blackest blacks were an actual shade of very dark green. dont know the time period. i think it came FROM asia somewhere though. maybe india. when taught to dye something when i was a kid, they said to always add one package of green dye to the black. guess thats the ticket.
When I first learned that rich households in the Victorian era would hire several laundry maids just blew my mind. NOW I know why they need that many. Not only the Lords’ and Ladies’ clothing requires delicate washing procedures, let’s not forget other non-clothing garments like bedsheets, towels, napkins/handkerchiefs, table cloths, and I guess they also need to wash other servants’ clothes? No wonder they needed that many laundry maids
And dedicated ones too! Where laundry day was 1 day for a standard house, in large households they would work all week long!
Laundry was actually a real job back then
It wasn't only household servants doing laundry, there were laundry businesses and among these were the laundries managed by nun's at which the workers were basically imprisoned slaves aka the poor house and homes for unmarried mothers. 😢
And some of those clothes required disassembly before being washed.
If that seems extreme, stairs in great houses were routinely disassembled for cleaning in summer.
And then there's the poor Maid of All Work who had to do all of that by themselves! My great grandmother was a Maid of All Work after her family kicked her out in her early 20s. Unfortunately she died before I was old enough to talk to her about it. I wish I could go back in time and give her the biggest hug (and then talk to her about workers rising up against the ownership class).
Also, having a spray bottle, full of water (with a few drops of essential oil) can help moisten the areas of dress drying too quickly. I can also recommend music (period appropriate if you wish) to make it more pleasurable.
and TV
when I was like, six or so, I went to a living history museum and INSISTED on hand washing all my own underwear for like two years after that. It was litarally my favorite chore. I had my own little wash basin and wash board. It was probably less stressful because I had running water and didn't have to make my own soap but honestly I've done it a few times as an adult when I couldn't aford the laundry in our apartment and the washing part at least I would not say would be the worst part about living in the past. Maybe the iorning though lol
The length of the dresses reflected social status and one’s lifestyle. Women involved in practical work wore dresses slightly raised from the ground as well as aprons to avoid the necessity of washing clothes worn regularly. Also, the work involved in washing clothes explains why middle class children, especially girls were obliged to behave with decorum and keep their clothes clean.
All hail to the pinafore.
"...[E]xplains why middle class children, especially girls were obliged to behave with decorum and keep their clothes clean."
And this is why my children, male and female, became responsible for stain treating their own clothes by 1st grade. So when he was in 6th grade, my son would squat when playing in a mound of dirt at the park rather than kneel or sit in it like his friends. And the other moms would look at their children and go "How am I supposed to get you HOME?!" while mine would stomp around a few minutes to knock most of it off of his shoes at worst.
@@mwater_moon2865 This is genius level parenting. I will be teaching my young children to stain-treat their own clothes now!
Not only that, the length off ones dress soon became a symbol of coming of age. Meaning the woman was ready to be courted.
Hb
If there _was_ Bernadette Banner tee shirt merch, I think there should _absolutely_ be a ‘wooden spoon mic’ tee shirt! And in parentheses it should say: “Historically Adequate”. 😂
I NEED IT NOW
Also, Bernadette in a Giant Pot shirts.
And an 'aesthetic trash' shirt, ft. Lady Sherlock.
I am amazed, how she hold this wooden spoon in 4:47.
In Jamaica, they have a blue bar of soap that really works well at making white clothes whiter. I just scrape a piece off, brush the area with the stain with a tooth brush and water, and the stain is gone.
My washing machine broke a few years ago and we weren't able to replace it immediately. The clothing was rough but the king-sized sheets and cloth baby diapers made the clothing seem easy. I completely agree with you that washing machines are one of man's greatest inventions.
Letters from my great-grandmother to my grandfather, written in 1919, detail the family’s money-saving plan for dealing with laundry while he was in college: He mailed his clothing home; she washed it with a washing machine powered by the motor of their kerosene-powered Waterloo Boy tractor, ironed it, and mailed it back. That November, she wrote that when he came home, he should “bring all your dirty clothes and bed-clothes what you get from now till Thanksgiving along. Then we will exercise the Waterloo Boy, thus saving a nice laundry bill and wear on clothes. You run the engine, and I do the bossing.” So glad I have a washing machine (also glad I have her wonderful letters!)
That's absolutely fabulous, those letters are a treasure!!
Fascinating!
There’s actually a PSA from 1941, “More Dangerous Than Dynamite” warning housewives away from using gasoline to soak their clothes in. It’s 10 minutes long and basically extols the safety of using a dry cleaner over gasoline. Great stuff and we’ll worth a watch.
my brain immediately went to that PSA when I saw the thumbnail. the PSA shows why you need to go to a reputable dry cleaner instead of doing the dry cleaning at home with gasoline because they have safety procedures in case gasoline explosions (including asbestos blankets). To this day, I can't believe it was a thing before more safer chemicals.
And for anyone interested in this dangerous practice "White Gas" sold in sporting goods stores is a closer match to the type of gasoline being used for this than anything you find at the corner pump due to all manner of modern additives.
ua-cam.com/video/B4KrtWWa2Jo/v-deo.html&ab_channel=DAKlives
And most especially do not use white gass and a dryer togeather...
Fellow Rifftrax fan?
This was fun...my mother told me about doing all of this when she grew up. Some of it she still did even with a "modern machine" in the 1970's...like borax and blueing. She taught me to appreciate a modern washer/dryer when I complained about washing diapers before I was able to buy "plastic" diapers (disposable). She remembered those washing days well. Especially interesting is that hanging out in the sun, and in the freezing weather, and both having a certain amount of whitening as well as germ killing ability.
LOL having your undies come in stiff as boards was always fun!
I love how Bernadette used her quilters rule to measure out the soap 😂
I've started transitioning to 18th century-styled chemises and stays rather than modern unders, and honestly? It's a bit of work to get started (so much sewing), but it's a freaking GAME CHANGER. My real life laundry is dramatically simpler to do, since my everyday modern skirts and tees went from being worn for one day to being worn for three or four before they need to be cleaned. I hang up my stays to air out, pile all of my chemises into a single load of non-delicate whites (with towels and stuff), and move on with my life. You can even hang them up and they're usually ready to wear again in less than a day.
As an added bonus, the layers of linen have oddly kept me cooler this summer than just normal polyester unders did. I've been running around in a Korean summer, for context: all heat and humidity. The linen does this thing where it wicks sweat out to the surface, then when it evaporates it chills you, and you basically end up wearing a refrigerator over your chest and back for the day. Like... I'm not going back, dudes. My ancestresses knew what they were doing.
Next step: shorter chemises and some sort of bloomers/boxers hybrid that I can wear under jeans so I don't look like an ultraconservative housewife every day. :P
thank you so much for sharing your experience! I've been considering doing something quite similar and am so excited/relieved to hear it's not an *entirely* absurd notion. :) best of wishes to you in your wardrobe adventures!
+++
Linen is amazing at keeping the body a comfortable temperature. If it’s hot, you wear just linen and it keeps you cool, and if it’s cold you cover it up, traditionally with wool, and it keeps you warm without getting as clammy as cotton or viscose tends to get.
I haven't gone full linen underwear, but I do use a tank-top underneath all other upper body clothing. Even this helps to maintan freshness and to cool me down (especially since i prefer loose tops).
Polyester does not “breathe.” When I retired and stopped wearing silk and cotton blouses and dresses for work. Instead, I went wash ‘n’ wear with polyester dresses in the summer, and started sweating. Easily rinsed out, but the feeling of it is something I will never get used to. But no more dry cleaning or ironing, which is great.
I keep thinking of Elizabeth Bennet's hem, "six inches deep in mud", and what it must have taken their servants/laundresses to get it out.
Edited to add: It also makes it so much clearer how it would have saved a LOT of time to have removable pieces (hems, necklines, linings etc) for the areas that get the most dirty
I think most modern laundry detergents already have the bluing in it. At some point detergent companies started putting the bluing in the soap and marketed as easier for people since it was one less step and they wouldn't have to figure out how much bluing to use, and then at some point people forgot bluing was a thing since it's already in the detergent. At least that's what I learned from Mat Pat's Style Theory video on laundry.
Perhaps the blue dots in older powder detergent and the blue color of some modern liquid ones?
@@patmanchester8045 I believe so, at least for the liquid detergents. It's been a hot minute since I've seen the Style Theory video on it, so I don't remember everything they might have said about why modern detergents are usually blue.
@@shelby8709 my mum told me when i was little that the blue offsets the natural yellowing of clothes as they're used, and the many stains caused by things that are naturally warmer toned (think food, soil/dirt). so the addition of a teensy bit of blue makes clothes, especially white ones, look sharper and newer!
Yes.
They are called optical brighteners, and they make hiding from night vision equipment nearly impossible.
You literally glow in the dark.
I'd like to add the fact that they didn't have running water at that time either and had to carry each bucket. And well water is usually much, much colder (household water around 20C and well water often below 10C). Since it's so much labor to get and heat water, the rinses would be done in cold water, which is intense on the hands.
I used to be a housekeeper in an Elizabethan Manor House, basic soap, soda crystals, borax and white vinegar, were essential cleaning materials for items that weren’t up to modern cleaning products. It helped that I had watched my mother clean clothes the old fashioned way; blue dye came wrapped in muslin, about the size of a peach kernel and was used on all the white products which were put first in the wash; shirts, aprons, tea towels were always soaked in starch before ironing.
Found the time traveler
Did you ever use the gasoline? Did it work?
Do u know why they used gasoline?
@@nahbirdie4773 It's the concept of "like dissolves like" from high school chemistry. Water-based cleaners dissolve and remove inorganic stains, like salts, some dirt and some food. Organic cleaners will dissolve organic stains like butter, oils, grease, paint and lots of the food stains. Gasoline is organic and will take out some stains that regular soap can't.
@@fazdoll thanks! ❤ that's crazy!
I have pictures of my “Dear Mom” (my great grandmother) wearing these types of gowns and I’m just trying to imagine her and her mom, the only women in the family puzzling over how to wash this new fashion. My great great grandmother wore practical dark clothes, so I can just hear her muttering in German about impractical, flouncy white dresses.
What a lovely snippet of family history! Thank you for sharing
I wish I could share photos in the comments on UA-cam. I have a family photo from about 1910. My great-great-grandma is wearing a very practical black dress while her sisters in-law are wearing those very flouncy white dresses. My 3x great grandma is also wearing a slightly older fashioned black dress. I avoid white dresses like the plague because I know I'd ruin it in 5 seconds flat. I guess my great-great-grandma felt the same, even if it wasn't as fashionable.
@@rlelesi one of my favorite old pictures is Dear Mom and Grandfather at the beach with her two oldest boys. Grandfather is looking like he is having a marvelous time and Dear Mom looks like she could set him on fire with her mind.
@@rlelesi you can upload it to imgur, then link the photo here!
I imagined that washing clothes was difficult back in the day, but I didn't imagine it was THAT difficult, that it required physical strength and knowledge of chemistry, and was kinda dangerous. Thank you for making this video, it was very interesting!
Thank you for a most entertaining and informative video, Bernadette. It brings so many childhood memories) E.g. I remember my mom used to add this blue paint to the water to give light blue geans a bit bluer colour) I grew up in a nothern Russian village with no water supply in the house, so every Saturday we had to fetch a lot of water to the bath-house and every Sunday my mother used to spend half a day washing (we had an electric washing machine that was filled with water manually from above), then she put all these clothes and linen in 4 or 5 big wooden buskets and we went together to the river to rinse the washing in the stream water. I remember one winter my mother fell underwater through an ice hole during the thaw. Luckily our neighbour was near and pulled her out of the water, she could have drowned if it wasn't for him. In summer we went to the river with my sister to rinse the washing and it was great fun, I remember once I put on some long dress and swam around in it pretending to be a mermaid) I guess if you were a Victorian woman who couldn't swim and had to wear multy-layered clothes while washing, you probably put your life at risk. Another reason to be greatful to the inventor of the washing machine - he saved not only much time for women but also many lives.
Bernadette’s willingness to experiment on this precious dress she spent so much time creating is absolutely wild to me. She’s so brave!
I so agree. She really is like a mad scient-tess, going through all sorts of alchemical experimentation. I simply love everything she does.
I agree! I was cringing when she poured the blue dye over her dress, I thought it would stain for sure 😨
When you make beautiful useful things yourself, you know that with a little work you can make it again. It is comforting knowledge. :)
@@wildflower1397 Love this!!
@@ellenmarch3095 It's a tiny piece of wisdom that a person who likes to build things passed on to me. He said that back when people knew how to build houses and barns as a community, they always knew they could and would rebuild after a disaster. Over the years I have discovered that it applies to just about anything. The knowledge takes away a lot of the fear, which is awesome!
My grandmother always washed her underwear in a bucket with hard soap and a “podger” as she called it, a modern day 1970s small plastic version of a dolly. The final rinse would have a blue bag (solid dye block in a muslin bag) dipped in it to brighten the whites. I still vividly remember the day our black and white tuxedo cat found the still damp bag and evidently had a very enjoyable afternoon with it. The laundry tiles rinsed clean easily enough but the cat remained black and bright blue for quite some time.
oh the poor cat! I can easily picture our black and white dog (who is very sweet and smart but is definitely still an idiotic puppy sometimes) doing the same exact thing!
@@jhardman1876 We had a black and white Portuguese water dog growing up and the neighbors once dyed him blue with food coloring as a joke! We thought it was great but my mom was less amused and washed him immediately.
I remember blue bags! I was told they could be applied as a remedy for inchman stings.
@@ugthump2753 Yes, I recall being stung by wasps as a small girl, and out came the blue bag from the laundry. It helped!
And here I am thinking hand washing my cashmere sweaters in a small wash tub in my bathroom is a chore. Ugh. Thank you washing machine
Here in Austria we have flowers growing everywhere that are called "soap flowers" (Saponaria officinalis)
They were used to clean and also to wash your hands when you are out in the nature.
And for oxalic acid there is sorrel "sour herb" (Rumex acetosa)
I think it would be VERY interesting if you could try to wash something without actually buying anything 🙃
I spent a year living in Mongolia and, not having a washing machine myself, doing the vast majority of my laundry by hand. I ended up doing one tumpin (large bucket) a night for several nights, because by the end of one, I was just *done*.
It's amazing, though, how many of the old habits you discover for yourself: always wearing a cami or other easily washable underlayer; hanging up the clothes I'd worn and allowing them to air out, so they could go longer without being washed; favoring wool clothes whenever possible. The Mongols also have a habit of changing out of nice work clothes and into something more easily washable as soon as you get home, and I took that one up too.
Can confirm, laundry by hand is a total pain. I cannot tell you how grateful that year made me for washing machines and vacuum cleaners!
I misread and thought you'd lived in Magnolia for a year. I could t figure out where you lived in Magnolia, Mississippi that didn't have the conveniences we have become accustomed to.
I've only begun watching the video so, maybe she covers this later, I'm just impatient but, for her project, couldn't you skip washing the whole garment most times & just wash the dirty parts? To avoid wear & tear if nothing else? I feel like they used kind of harsh chemicals to clean back then.... Let me just watch the video, lol. But, what do you think? As a person that has some real life experience with this? I feel like most people would think that suggestion is gross, ha ha ha.
@@DarlingDaintyfoot I'm sure you probably would, much of the time, but given that there are specific instructions for how to clean a summer dress that presume this exact scenario (got dirt on it) I assume she's right to follow those instructions. I was going to add that she didn't use anything *too* harsh, just a dilute acid, and then I remembered that they instructed her to use gasoline haha.
@@jasper3706 Ha ha ha ha. Yeah, I looked up oxalic acid to see what stains it would be used for & apparently that's a pretty harsh chemical as well. That makes sense, that this just happened to be the day to launder it... It just threw me off since it seemed as if she had only wore it once & now needed to launder the whole thing rather than just cleanse the dirty areas & hang it up to "air out", lol. Thanks!
When I was a kid our washing machine broke and we couldn't afford a new one for some time. My mother was a stay-at-home mum and got us to help but it still took a substantial amount of time. I think having to have a job AND do hand laundry for a family of six would have been hell.
Bernadette just sitting in a pot while doing an ad is just top tier content
Yes! I was also hoping for an outtake of getting out of it 😅
That non-sequitur 'chonky' at about 9 minutes in is also good
@@ElizabethChronis "This is actually quite comfy...except it's wet." was pretty funny though!
And the feet wriggling at the end XD
U mean... pot tier content. (sorry i had to)
I used to folk dance and we had to prepare our dresses the traditional way. My grandma always helped with starching the 4 layers of white underskirts, I remember they got rock hard and puffy after the process. We also had a very colorful pleated top skirt with this unique flower motif that was not to be washed ever so we had to take good care of it when worn, it was also stored stuffed into old thighs just like a stuffed sausage haha. I remember all the girls in the folk dance group had a different color top skirt like purple green red or blue. Sweet elementary and high school memories. I was born in 2000 so it was cool to learn about these old garment maintenance traditions.
Thank you for sharing this nice memory, I enjoyed reading it! I did not enjoy realizing that people born in 2000 potentially graduated high school 5 years ago, lol
Remember hanging those petticoats up so they dried as a big circle to make them more full when you wore them?
I've washed many similar garments as part of a volunteer group I belong to. Many of the methods we use are the same as your guide. One thing I've learned is to use a soft brush to work out as much dried mud from the fabric before wetting. This will get a lot of the clay which causes the biggest discoloration out. Always dissolve your ingredients before adding the garment. The reason they advise to roll the garment in fabric vs hanging is wet fibers are weak and the weight of the wet hanging garment will damage them. Overall very interesting and inspiring! Thanks!
I was reading a book recently where the author waxed poetic about laundry days of the past - the same sort of "we've lost something in our disconnectedness" argument that I'm usually very on board with. But laundry specifically?? Madness. That's the sort of wistfulness someone only has when they haven't actually had to experience the task. All this work for a single garment!
People romanticize the weirdest things. I love hanging a few wet washed clothes on a line from time to time because our climate is very dry. But I said "from time to time"! There's a reason people don't still do chores the old way.
Not to be a total downer but my great aunt was using tetracholorethyline back in the 30s to dry clean some clothes (had to google that chemical). She and her husband were doing it indoors because it was winter, and they were told repeatedly not to do that indoors. Don't do that. Very flammable.
No love for the work involved, that's for sure, but getting to _wear_ something that's been fabulously and meticulously pressed and starched? Absolute heaven.
@@annwood6812 Unfortunately a lot of us living in urban areas can't really hang clothes outside to dry because they will *not* smell like flowers and sunshine afterwards! It is a nice idea though :)
When someone asks me "did you have a hard day" I always answer "Well at least I didn't have to go down to the creek and bash my clothes clean with rocks and water".
imo some ppl would probably enjoy it. the way some ppl get lost in doing any physical tasks. some ppl would be extremely stressed out. the problem back then was people (mothers, maids, wives, washing-lady) had no choice. it's not something they did sometimes if they want to but if they don't do this the whole family won't have anything to wear the next week. so i thank GOD (and the inventor and the companies etc) that made washing machine and stream iron
My granny used to use this blue dye for all her white linen washing, but also to give a light blue tint on her dark hair ☺
Blue dye (or indigo) is also traditionally used with lime to whiten the outer walls of traditional/historical houses on many Greek islands. 🤓 So yes, it is still being used today.
Laundry Bluing was not made from Indigo, It was made from Prussian Blue or Synthetic Ultramarine.
I think indigo was sometimes used, at least in the USA.
This series goes over everything ua-cam.com/video/wK9OyW4Jx_g/v-deo.html
Oh, we still got that around on supermarkets even today in my country. They sell it on these palm sized old timey golden tins with matching typography and design on it, like it came straight from a general store on the 50's
My grandma used too, as so does my mum and now I.
Here in Spain is called "azulete" although I think that's one of the many brands.
Bluing is sometimes still used (by the very old fashioned) to wash grey horses. If you use too much the horse is sort of blue. Ha
It was in the 60s 70s but my mother told me on sunny hot days they washed all white things and put them out, laying on dry grass into full disposal to the sun so mud stains would be soaked out by the heat. It worked perfectly. I can see that Edwardians did this too with bed clothes and white dresses to remove the last stains before washing it again and then dry it as u did with the summer dress, starching and ironing it. Might have helped with the more aggressive stains.
Im surprised that the ammonia and other chemicals were poured directly on the dampened fabric. I would have mixed it in the water and add the damp dress after. Thank goodness for the invention of detergent. And we have sooo many types!
I do this even with modern washers, you're supposed to let the detergent agitate thru the water a few seconds then add clothes. I was also surprised to see her dump day additives direction on the clothes.
Bernadette, generally, you have to thoroughly mix all of your additives to any water BEFORE you add your garment to let it soak. (Just like you did with the bluing.) If you sprinkle it on top of your wash water with the garment already in it, you can damage the garment...This is so you can thoroughly mix the solution and not risk having concentrated spots of the additive land on the fabric when you have a limited amount of water in the cauldron.
Exactly what I was itching to say all video long 😂
Facts, i learnt that the hard way with bleach.
I was thinking this XD
I have been looking for this comment, thank you!
Ahhhh, I have found my people.
10:23 Fun fact Windex works great as a stain remover for especially difficult stains like makeup because it’s basically just water and ammonia. I tested this while working in retail because I didn’t want to put a pretty white garment into our damaged pile just because of a foundation stain. I had previously done a lot of stain removal for a bridal shop using diluted ammonia (either with water or shout) and cheesecloth so I looked around at the cleaning supplies my store had and found that windex was mainly ammonia and water and it worked like a charm
Wow!
This is actually extremely useful to know. I'll spray my stains with windex right away in the future. I would have never thought to do that.
Wonderful to know! Thank you for this comment!
Windex is my carpet stain remover of choice. It has a million uses. Mostly because it’s just water and ammonia 😁
And here I keep thinking window cleaners always smell so nice - it's probably because they pepper it with scents to cover the ammonia xD
I loved this! Both my mother (b 1923) and my first mother in law (b 1915) grew up without electricity. And both their mothers made their own soap. I have my grandmother's soap making kettle - brass, iron handle, a foot wide, 6 inches deep - and a nostalgic chunk of lye soap. No standard weights or measures until later in the 20th century. Every woman had her own recipes passed down by word of mouth. I was taught bluing and liquid starch! Until permanent press fabrics in the early 1970s, it was the only option. For a great depiction of a commercial laundry, the 2015 film Suffregette has one. Both women still used old laundry methods! Yes, exhausting work!
For "pressing out" the water I thought about doing it kinda similiar to knitted stuff: You press out as much water as you can with your hands, then take a towel (or two or three depending on the size and how much garment/clothing) und put your clothing in there and roll up the towel - kinda like a sushi roll. :D And then you walk over your towel-sushi-thing or stand on it. With this you get more water out than by just pressing with your hands and it's still gentle. :)
(edit: classic thing of not watching the whole video and then commenting :D)
Since the mud stains were only on the bottom of the dress. I would have hung the dress over the side of the tub to the water , and scrubbed the dirt off. This would prevent the mud and dirt from coming into contact with the rest of the dress. After the mud was removed it would be safe to put the entire dress in.
you absolutely should not touch washing soda water (or washing soda alone). it WILL burn the fuck out of your hands and will destroy whatever you use to scrub. she didn’t even properly ventilate the bathroom when using it. for the sake of comparison, bleach and washing soda both have a pH level of 11. the only difference is that washing soda being a powder makes it far easier to accidentally inhale too much since it doesn’t have the same strong smell that bleach does. nobody listen to this comment unless you want your life to be absolute painful hell for the next week with dirty clothes and ruined laundry accessories. there’s a reason why washing soda isn’t a staple in laundry anymore
This doesn't work. The iron in the dirt would travel up with the water and so the clothing would have a stain on it to where the water stopped traveling. 5:00 speaks of this briefly, explaining silk can be stained if it isn't submerged properly, but this goes for any garment.
You might ask how I know this? I have tried it myself. On a very dirty garment, it does seem logical that you shouldn't submerge the whole thing. However, what you SHOULD do is go through a step of rinsing as much as you possibly can off of the garment, but then submerge the whole garment in cleaner water and then wash accordingly.
@@BlackSeranna that makes so much sense. However, I believe the part about the silk is because silk doesn't do well in water. It can even dissolve in water.
@@forforever4980 that is interesting. I never have understood how to clean silk properly - I have silk items so I wash them as little as possible. I know that dry cleaning is a thing, but dry cleaning chemicals are basically like cleaning in kerosine. I usually do hand wash my silks.
@@BlackSeranna I worked in Bridge clothing for years. I don't remember which vendor recommended hand washing silks in shampoo, because they're a protein. [It was a reputable source] I ruined a matching set doing this. Whatever method you choose, wash matching items together always.
May I recommend getting a good quality garment brush - not as coarse as for wool coats, but a softer one. Letting the mud and dirt first dry and then brushing hemlines works wonders.
I use the soft nylon skin scrubber
My mother and I have been washing our clothes by hand for years. My mom is 95. She showed me how to roll up the wet clothes in a towel when I was young. Of course we have liquid soap made nowadays so we don't need to make it. I used to iron my clothes with a flat iron that I heated in front of a gas fire. I don't like ironing though so I just buy fabrics that don't wrinkle much.
I'm Brazilian, when I was a kid we still didn't have electricity in some parts of the country side, I remember my sister's doing laundry and it had some similarities to this process, also the iron was a metal piece you'd out hot embers inside to iron the clothes. Sewing machines were moved with the foot. Definitely not an easy process.
The funny thing is, my family actually did live without electricity or running water for around eight years of my childhood. Therefore, we regularly used an old fashioned ringer and washer.
It was exhausting, I'll tell you that. I don't know how anyone thought the women who did this weekly were weak.
It's why men used to fear their wives. They had muscle, and if they left, they were left with an awful lot of work.
lol handwashed all my clothes until bachelors ) we had like 2 machines per dorm, handwashing was faster
We had an electric ringer washing machine when I was a toddler. Then my arm got caught in it one day and Grandpa ordered Dad to buy Mom an proper washer and dryer. My arm's fine BTW, but I do have a rather impressive scar on my left elbow and somewhat limited range of motion. I could get that part fixed with plastic surgery, but... it's never seemed worth the effort and certainly not worth the money - and talking insurance into paying for it would be a _ton_ of effort and not guaranteed to work.
To get political, I have a therory that woman "left" the household because the house work got easier and easier due to modern machinery to a point were it no longer was respected. So they just ran out of things to do.
@@albinlindh4000 Huh, never thought about that. It makes sense tho. Being at home with nothing to do is dull.
The mention of bluing took me back to about 1987, when I read an old children's book at my great-grandmother's house about how a white kitten dyed itself blue when it jumped into the laundry. I had to ask my mom why it turned blue. The book must have been from the 1930's, given the age of my Great-Grammie's kids. Thanks for the nostalgia!
"Peppermint"! My sister and I loved that book in the 70's and I saved it for my kids, but it made them cry.
I loved that book!
Bluing is sold in my chain grocery store. I've used it for a number of laundry issues. Yellowed fabrics (bras) et al.
@@kayo5291 I remember that book. It always reminded me of the time my mom told me how her same-aged cousin had died at the age of 2 when she fell from a table into a pot (idk how, kids were not monitored the same way back then).
I'm from Iceland where women would walk long ways with laundry to wash in the natural hot-springs. It was dangerous and difficult work, you could fall in, get burnt or get killed on the way back with the heavy load of wet clothes.
My granny used a blue bag in the 1940's which was small bag which got dangled in the final rinse. I love starched sheets and used to starch my own using cornflower starch. Not only does is keep the sheets clean for longer but makes a dry cotton sheet so easy to iron and the hot iron seems to glide over the fabric. Without starch 20 minutes a double sheet with starch 5 minutes may be a minute or two longer. Bliss! Everyone in UK used a professional laundry as the climate made sheets impossible to dry at home. We had laundry racks that hung up in the kitchen to dry the clothes. Thank goodness for tumble dryers. French courtesans changed their sheets every ten days as they took so long to launder. I think this is a fascinating piece of information and very good advice.
I was taught by my grandmother (and I'm now 75), to put the cleaning stuff (ie oxalic acid or amonia, etc) in the water and see that it is mixed into the water, before adding the garment. You would never pour anything directly on the fabric as you have done here.
In laboratories they still teach this - "do what you oughta, add acid to watta [water]" - because if you start adding water to a very concentrated acid it can sometimes throw off enough heat to break glass - or worse! Most home-use chemicals are not sold in a form pure enough for literal explosions to be a problem (with the notable exception of powdered lye, which really _is_ that dangerous), but I do it anyway for both habit and the "evenly distribute" part.
Monday was always wash/laundry day. And it took all day. Mum had an old fashioned wringer washer, she never got an automatic till about 1975. Mum didn't think the new automatics would clean as well as the old ones.
The wash house, usually shared, was a common feature of older houses in the U.K.. A firebox and copper tub were built in, you wouldn’t have moved the tub, but taken the clothes from the tub to an empty bucket with big wooden tongs and then rinsed them. The washing was done from whites to darks topping up the copper as needed. I know quite a lot about this subject as my great aunt was a laundress in the early 1900’s and many people still washed clothing by hand, including my mum, as washing machines were expensive, until the 1970’s. I was hand washing my own clothes into the 1980’s, as my mother didn’t trust me with her machine.
How cool is that?!
That is so cool! I could sit and hear you talk about all that for an hour that's so interesting
My family farm in the US has a wash house, or as we pronounce it, "warsh house". They set down a big cast-iron stove, and built the wash house around it, because that was easier than doing it the other way around and trying to figure out how to get the stove in through the door.
Familiar, the miners houses all had back yards with their own copper.
My in-laws house has a wash house out back (the house is in the middle of nowhere in the East Midlands) tho it hasn't been used as such for quite some time. The house itself has had many uses, from family home to dr surgery to village post office to bakery and back to family home.
I just realized halfway through the video that she’s using the wooden spoon as a microphone because she’s got the mic attached to it and I can’t stop cracking up 😭🤣
Just found your channel today. Already subscribed. I’m a father of 3 in my mid 40’s. I have been sewing since I was 4 and I’m so excited to have found your channel. The ring from my first wedding was a beautiful Edwarding piece with a diamond and sapphires.
Wow, and I thought sorting, loading, annoying noise, handling damp laundry, and folding it away was a lot. I only occasionally hand wash my printed tote bag, almost-boil my reusable face wipes, and underwear if I've been too lazy to do the actual laundry. I'm so grateful washers and detergents!
I remember a historical novel where the neighbors gossiped about a rich family that showed off how rich they were and how many outfits they owned by only having the washer women come once a month. This was set in a rural area where the laundry was done outside.
Once a month? I bet that washer woman kept busy for a full week and left with her hands and back aching!
Sounds interesting, what was the title of the book? I'm currently reading some Edith Wharton and loving it
@@ca296 - I believe the author is Pamela Morsi. She wrote several excellent novels set in Appalachia.
i heard about the gossipping somewhere too
Do you think something like that is accurate? It's a known thing that stains set when not attended to within a certain time period; I'd reckon they had to throw away a lot of clothing because of complete losses.
I remember my mother washing my father’s white fine linen shirts by hand with a wash board…this was the early 1060’s in Africa. Before she started her washing day, she would save potato peels from the kitchen, soaking them in water to get the starch out. Then she would dry the starchy water in the sun until all that was left in the bowl was a beautiful dazzling white hard powder. Castile soap and a scrub brush were her weapons of choice for the collar stains. Once clean, she would run them through a basin of starch water singly, then immediately iron them. She kept a mug of water to sprinkle on the shirt if it was drying out too quickly. (A lady who came to help her had a unique method of taking a mouthful of clean water and “spraying” it onto the shirt as she ironed!). Finally, if a shirt really needed it, she would take it to an Indian laundry where they used the bluing technique you describe and it would come back faintly blue. I knew I had “grown up” when she trusted me to iron my father’s clothes…..or maybe it was just so she could have a cup of tea?
My grandmother always had at her ironing board a Coke bottle of water, plus they sold a perforated steel attachment for the top, so you could sprinkle water onto the clothes.
great history lesson and story of your family Thanks!
@@annoravetz5908 I remember that. I also remember my mom sprinkling cotton items, rolling them and putting them in a plastic bags and popping them into the fridge, then removing one dampened item at a time to be ironed with the dry iron (long before my dad got her a steam iron).
I have my grandma's wash scrub board ..... a glass scrub board in a wooden frame .... the wood is almost white from being bleached out by harsh soap, boiling water and bleaching agents she used. Sadly, the tin plate above the scrub board disappeared before my mom remembers using it herself.
holy shit the scrub brush! I'd completely forgotten about the scrub brush! it was for stains and usually my grandma would also rub the clothes directly with the bar of soap
When I was in college (university) I lived in a sketchy off-campus apartment where there was a laundry thief. I hated paying for the machines anyway but when I was notified that someone was stealing laundry I resolved to wash my clothes by hand. I did for about 2 months until I couldn't take it anymore. I gritted my teeth and went back to the laundry room. Luckily I never had my stuff stolen but whoa, those 2 months were wild
I remember blue jeans being the worst to do by hand in college.
As a textiles nerd this whole process of cooking fabric in soap and water is actually very similar to a process known as scouring. Anybody who sews knows that you should wash your fabric before working with it this is to remove any sizing. Scouring is also used for removing sizing. Scouring is actually more effective at removing dirt and other things than just machine washing as such scouring is still done today for preping fabric/fiber for dying. It's really interesting to see these methods I use today also being used historical. Also I would suspect that textiles manufacturers at the time were mostly likely doing this process before making a garment and the normal people were using the same methods as the textiles makers as suggested by the manufacturer. I'm of course not an expert on historical textiles processes so I might be completely off base, but it's an interesting thought
Now I'd be interested in a "How I take care of my victorian/edwardian/tailored garments in modern techniques" video. Because this is super interesting! But as you said, unpractical. So a contemporary garment care would be of interest to me.
Yes, the modern counterpart would be very useful.
My grandmother really likes to tell me about how laundry was done in her family when she was a child, and this comment section seems like an excellent place to put down the things that I remember from that. The grandmother in question grew up in a rather small German town in the 1930s and 40s, and she had what you might call a rural lifestyle, helping on the fields in the summertime etc. She said, like you mentioned, it took an entire day plus preparations, it was done in the Waschküche (literally: washing kitchen), so they had an extra room, and it was done about once every four weeks, which meant you didn't have fresh underwear every day. In the winter, sometimes the washing froze instead of drying, and it was quite funny to her to see her father's long (under-)pants stand on their own. Underwear was boiled. Shirts were starched. Stains on white fabric were often removed by drying them flat in direct sunlight. They used soap flakes, which either are still available today or she kept some, because she really liked the smell, and she let me smell them when she told me her stories. Quite a lot of the washing equipment is still around in the family. For example, we keep potatoes in the cellar in a large metal container with holes on the side, I think that was part of the Waschtrommel (for which I don't know the exact translation, unfortunately). The one thing my grandmother keeps on insisting every time she tells these stories is how much work it was, so it seems like your intense appreciation of modern washing machines after the process was very accurate indeed, because she absolutely shares it.
Waschtrommel literally translates to “ wash drum” and while a drum is a term we still use for a container, it would most likely translate to “washing basin” in modern English. Also thank you for the fun story
I can confirm that soapy white clothes (using a bar of common laundry soap) whiten perfectly in the sunlight. I do this to my light coloured underwear and other white clothing once every summer and it all goes back to pristine. Just hang it with soap and the following day wash normally. Works every time.
I remember my mother in the 50s in the Netherlands "cooking " the laundry, especially the diapers for my younger sister. Then the wash was taken out to the patio where the washing tub stood. It had a wringer and sometimes I was allowed to turn it which was hard. The clothes hung out side to dry and, yes , sometimes they froze. In the summer the diapers were laid out on the tiny lawn to bleach. Even later in Canada it was done that way until one day Dad came home with a second hand washing machine, the kind with a big tub and a wringer on it. It was still frequently my job to hang up the laundry out side or take it in.
@@CrazyMazapan oh wow, i didn't know that. i'm totally going to try that. thanks!
@@CrazyMazapan *takes notes*
This blue powder is still used here as well!🇬🇷
My grandmother still has it and she washes the white clothes with it.
They also used it to permanently dye our traditional clothes in this deep indigo blue colour!
We call it λουλάκι / lulàki here 🇬🇷
Interesting, thank you for sharing!
I've lived in several countries and I have to say that the countries that don't encourage making housework and grocery shopping convenient and easy for women (Women are still the primary houseworkers and grocery shoppers), these places cannot say that they highly value women's time or labor, therefore, women. Having space in one's living quarters - be it a house or an apartment - space big enough to put a large refrigerator and large freezer and a large washing machine and a large dryer (and hang a clothes line) are key to reducing the time necessary doing shopping, cooking, meal preparation, and laundry. Not having to shop every day or every other day, not having to cook or eat out every single day, not having to hang out all day because doing a tiny load of laundry takes 2 hours and one has to do 6 loads of laundry instead of 2 because one's washing machine is tiny (And you prefer to do the laundry because you don't care for the way your maid does the laundry), all these are key to saving hours and days of precious time.
A large refrigerator and freezer and of course a stove and oven large enough to cook more than three things at a time, mean that one can cook once and then store meals for several days in the refrigerator plus in the freezer for the future and go shopping once instead of several times in a week. Having a large washer, dryer and space for a closed line allows one to do a load of wash in 20 minutes instead of 2 hours and to do 1 large load of wash instead of three or four loads of wash.
This video shows what a waste of women's precious time to do things not only in Victorian times but right now in Europe.
A suggestion for future laundry experimentation is to use more water in your tub and add your chemical to that water. Stir it to distribute it evenly, then add the garment. Pressing is advised as opposed to wringing (i.e., twisting) a garment, which is a rougher process. Wrapping it in a towel and rolling it up gently helps remove water. The processes are the same for modern hand washing. If you know how to hand wash the Edwardian instructions are not so vague. You needed to use much more water for your various steps, especially rinsing. Thus, the reason why you had to haul gallons of water over and over. You should have filled your tub about a 1/4 full and worked the fabric gently, drain, and repeat the process until your rinse water is almost clear, indicating you have removed most of the soap. It also would have removed more of the dirt. Also, although you don’t boil the water, you must have it hot, which is hard on your hands, to say the least. It is why in various depictions, you will see women using wooden paddles to stir the laundry at various points in the process. You would have really have had wrecked hands if you had to use a scrub board. I had the benefit of having a grandmother who was both a farm wife and home-ec teacher to give pointers and stories about what it was like when she was young. While it is enjoyable to imagine the past, the amount of physical labour required to perform daily tasks is almost unimaginable to modern people.
I might add that if if is only the hem of the garment that is stained, you could treat that hem in a small tub while leaving the rest of the garment dry.
Bravo! Yep except for some agitation and gentle to moderate scrubbing on that Frank dirt. Still doubt it would get out completely but much less obvious.
It makes so much sense for having a replaceable hem/flounce etc.
Yes I was shocked when she poured the ammonia directly on the clothing! No, mix it well first, then add the clothing I kind of screamed at the screen...
@@ThreadBomb There is a question of whether there may be water staining, which would leave discolouration between where the fabric was wet and dry. There is also the issue of slight colour variance between a washed and unwashed fabric. Using the old style cleaning processes may make it more likely, depending on the fabric. And in cottons there may be some shrinkage of washed vs unwashed areas. The old adage to wash cotton before sewing was/is to create a garment that won’t shrink the next time it’s washed.
@@tanon823 I believe the point was to use the stain treatment only on the stained hem. Then follow with laundering the whole garment in ordinary washing soap.
My grandma used to tell me stories about her having to do laundry for her whole family alongside her sisters and mother as early as age 7. My Gran had 9 siblings, plus mom and dad, they didn't had a laundry room in the old house and the bathroom was too small to fit them all so they usually went outside in the backyard during the early morning and each sister was responsible of washing their own piles of laundry and one of the male siblings piles so it was literally an entirely day dedicated to just doing laundry. Great grandma meanwhile was on the kitchen boiling the undergarments, one pot for the males the other for the women, and then when the daughters were done she would wash her and my great grandpa's clothes. Than after she married and had 3 kids (which of course also had to do laundry for) she went to work at the local church as a laundress, washing the clerical garments, the robes and such once a week also cook and clean.
This was way back in the 50s-60s and here on chile, the first proper washing machines only caught up around the 70's so until then she described doing the laundry by hand.
To this day she says that her dreams/nightmares all start with her doing laundry even if it's been well over 40 years that she stopped having to kill her soul doing it, it was an amount of work that she just always loathed.
That’s so interesting! It’s always cool to hear about the day to day lives of different families in different times. Even if it was tiresome work, it’s fun to imagine the little moments they had together, feeling the early morning breeze and warming up the laundry pot and chatting with your siblings while you let your clothes soak
do you remember those white cilinder like washing machines with an orange light protected by some plastic?
I think we had one from the late nineties to almost 2008. Before that my mother hand washed everything
I think I had nightmares with those huge ass cilinder machines (ours wasn't that big, I was tiny, but there were some really big)
(I'm also from Chile)
Soñaría el olor del jabón Popeye?
@@isaibanez pensar que aún se usa bastante
@@Rotten_Prince Ay la lavadora de cilindro, si si, de hecho aún tenemos la primera que le regalaron a mi madre en el año 90, una cosa enorme grande amarilla que por arte de magia arcana aún funciona y que usamos cuando se nos hecha a perder la lavadora.
My mother (maybe 60+ years ago) used a bottle that had a top with small holes in it that she used to sprinkle clothing when she was ironing to use on dry areas of clothing. Bluing was also often used. She used an old wringer washer and would wring the clothes from the soapy water into the clean rinse water tub, then wring the rinsed clothing into another container.
Wringers were scary to me as you could easily get your fingers into them. There was a lever that could be hit to disengage the wringer and open it up when clothes were too thick for the wringer or something was caught. And since my family lived on a farm where clothes got pretty dirty. Also, everything was line dried. She hated doing laundries until she finally got a regular washer. One of the best things that were made for housewives, in my opinion.
On a side note, My father's mother was badly burned and died 3 days later (approx. 1923) when the Kerosene stove she was doing something to flashed back at her. Life was very hazardous.
Due to the time involved in hand sewing garments as an exploration in historical techniques... Bernadette will -never- make as many black garments for her channel as The Closet Historian has for hers. And yet we happily watch both.
Make what you're going to love.
Oh my gosh, I was so scared for that dress! Your pot looked to be aluminim, which reacts to all kinds of things, which is why it darkened where the wash water was. I was afraid it would stain the dress, but it doesn't seem like it did. Also, laundry bluing isn't actually a dye. It's particulate; you can use it as fountain pen ink, and as part of some really fun kids' science experiements.
I was given to understand that bluing is artificial ultramarine (ground lapis), also used to make the paint used to depict the virgin Mary in almost every illuminated manuscript.
Some of my great aunts would use it as a hair rinse to get the yellow out of white locks between trips to the hair dresser - hence the "blue haired old lady" stereotype! And no, not recommended.
In my much younger days, when I showed dogs, I would use blueing in the rinse water for white and white-maned dogs.
@AthenaeusGreenwood -- Huh, I'd been given to understand the old ladies' failing eyesight for colour differentiation was the reason for their blue hair; it looked white to their old eyes. Less of a chosen-tool problem and more of either a mis-timed usage or incorrect visual interpretation of the results sort of issue.
@@iprobablyforgotsomething Yes, cataracts make everything look more yellow than it is.
My grandmother (who raised me) did all her laundry by hand with no running water. We washed over an outdoor wood fire using Fels Naphtha soap (cut up and dissolved on the stove), borax, washing soda, and bluing. (I still use Aunt Lydia’s bluing in my washing machine on white stuff.) We washed on Monday and ironed on Tuesday. She used a set of 6 sad irons made of cast iron, and frankly they did a better job than my current featherweight electronic model. Grandmam could iron a man’s shirt in 3 minutes. The reason all underclothes and men’s good shirts were white was to cut down on the loads of laundry to be done. I was very young while living with her and my grandpap, and while I miss them, I do not miss the lifestyle of backbreaking work!
I love your story. Your grandparents were precious! It's amazing that people back then had so much common knowledge and physical stamina to do such work. Precious memories for you.
Yes, Fels Naptha!
Yep, the naptha soap is what she could have made, it said in the recipe naptha or gasoline. Napthalene is what is in fels naptha soap.
So she COULD have followed the instructions.
Thank you for writing the words 'Fels Naphtha'... (always a bar of it on my grandmas sink... strange, what can unearth the fondness of familiarity) ty...
@@mozu517 Right- i use a Dollar Tree cheese grater for the Fels Naptha to put in washing machine.
Bar soaps are usually easy to grate. My mother made pastes of Ivory soap bars for applying to spots before washing. (I know they want you to soak your garment in water first, and that makes sense to me, so take as step two the application of a paste made of Ivory's bar soap -- some of the others definitely do not work so well). Unless Ivory has recently changed their soap recipe, the paste she made by soaking grated bars in water and then applied on spots on cottons to soak before washing is unquestionably effective on white cottons and probably worth experimenting with.
This is so interesting!!! My mother was born in 1939 but she remembers having to do laundry and it wasn't done like this but she remembers it being a huge process!!! She had to hand agitate the washer they had and then had to wring out the clothes through a wringer. Then they dried everything outside. It is interesting that the delicates were layered so that you don't have to wash the outside clothes more. Thank you for this tutorial!!
Regarding danger and wringers; have you ever heard the term used "don't get your tit in the wringer"? It means don't get in a panic for good reason.
One thing I would add is the way that this work was done communally, whether among the women of a household, a neighborhood/community, or professionals. The book Never Done talks a lot about the isolation that creating a world where most people (women) do their own laundry in a machine alone in their house created. Also interesting to think about how the standards of what needs to be done increased in the 20th century to align with the lesser amount of labor used so that the total amount of time spent keeping house etc basically stayed the same!
Yes!!! I think about this a lot whenever I see something on housecleaning tech &/or advancements.
I found that when I moved into an apartment without laundry facilities, laundry day at the local laundromat was an important part of the community social scene. We all did our own work, but much gossip and chasing of children was done. I don't miss the inconvenience of packing everything up and going several blocks with my son and his little red wagon, but I do miss the ability to multitask with all the machines while catching up with the neighbors.
Yep we/they keep upping the standards to keep us busy. Idle hands and all that.
@Julia Mar - I agree that laundry, as well as dish washing, is "Never Done", but not with the isolation part. I run downstairs, put the clothing in the machine with a detergent I make from soap flakes (recipe came with the flakes + I add peppermint essential oil for a nice smekk), turn it on and dash forth to do something interesting. Takes 5 minutes or so.