Hello dear viewers! Just wanted to let folks know that for Reasons, the Brooklinen code has been updated and is now "SNAPPYDRAGON20". You can still use the same link, bit.ly/SNAPPYDRAGON_Brooklinen . 🐉💚
That background music is terrible and distracting. Please don't do that. You don't NEED background music, and it definitely shouldn't be louder than your vox channel and distracting stuff that would only appeal to a small demographic of your audience.
I believe the French "le pescheur aus lavendieres" translates more closely to "the fisher of laundresses." I *absolutely* admit I could be quite wrong; I haven't spoken more than a handful of words in French since high school 21 years ago, though I can still read it. Either way, I don't think you're actually wrong; I just like to banter back and forth about matters linguistic.
I wish I could elaborate further, but growing up I was told to be grateful we didn’t do the traditional (Korean) laundry style where you UNSEW ALL SEAMS IN YOUR CLOTHES and then beat them in the river to get all the sickness demons out. Because they hide in the seams so it would be gross to wash still sewn clothing. Thus laundry day was capped off with resewing all your clothes back together. 😭
Oh dear that sounds even worse than the japanese method of seam ripping the lining for a wash out of the more precious (painted and embroidered) kimono that can't be washed, argh. Never did that with mine though, underlayers for a win >
This probably started as a way to get rid of any lice lurking in the garment seams. I'd soon be known as the woman whose clothes are only tacked together!?
@@rosemarielee7775 Please keep in mind lice can only cling/crawl onto human hair not clothing. Body lice does exist, but is far less common to head lice and both are easily removed with fine toothed combs.
From my understanding, this unstitching refers specifically to the need to remove the water soluble paper pieces set at the collar and cuffs of the jeogori (jacket, top piece). These should be called dongjeong (collar paper piece) on the git (neckline), and kkeutdong (paper cuffs?) on the somae buri? (sleeve ends). I'm not too sure tho. The only total dismanteling of the jeogori that should occur, would be only in winter when the quilted stuffing was removed! Korean women did wear an undergarment over their chest wrappings under the jeogori, apperently, but Im not sure if it had sleeves? hence the need for specialised cuff and collar pieces!
I think what's really important about the whole "people in the past weren't stupid" mindset is to keep in mind that people find solutions to the problems that are important to them using the resources that are available to them. So we can say that even though "progress" is not strictly linear, for many problems that we still have to deal with today, having more resources makes our solutions better--but technology also changes the problems we face. Like nowadays the problem of "being machine launderable" is much more salient to clothing manufacture than the problem of "not having to be laundered as often."
@@SnappyDragon There's also the fun aspect that the myth of linear progress comes from Christian imperialism and that uncritical nostalgia is extremely closely tied with white supremacy. "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," might be the only healthy framework?
When my grandmother would have a bitch at my mother over how easy she had things with vacuum cleaners and automatic washing machines with a spin cycle, my mother would say it wasn't that simple, because a) gran never had to pick up Lego; and b) As the technology made laundry easier, standards of cleanliness rose so you had to do it every day rather than just on Monday.
I remember reading a passage out of a magazine or newspaper from the 1850s that said the same thing, but about clothes! "Now that we've got sewing machines to make stitching faster, of course we start designing dresses with so much more of it that they take the same amount of time to make."
@@lnorlnor The loony left are not exactly celebrated for paying close attention to personal hygiene, so I am not sure what this festering woke garbage is doing on a thread about washing clothes.
One of my favorite realisations of all times is that the fairytale about the miller’s daughter turning straw into gold was about making flax into linen.
Also goldthread for embroidery. That was made by taking either a linen or silk thread (called the soul) and wrapping an incredibly thin strip of gold foil (sometimes glued onto a parchment base to make it more durable) around that thread. In medieval Cologne, where famous goldthreads were produced and exported to all of Europe, linen was used as the base. And because you needed small, delicate fingers to wrap the gold foil around that base thread, very young girls from the countryside were often hired for this job. They were promised by the guild of embroiderywomen (a guild consisting *only* of women, i might add) that when they got older and too big to continue making goldthread they would then be trained in the craft of embroidery and be able to work in this very profitable business. But for many of the young female workers, this promise turned out to be false.
My local village still has the outdoor area where the women would wash the clothes. It's like a square pond with wood around the edges to stand/kneel on, and a roof over it held up by four wooden posts. Of course it's not used these days.
@@SnappyDragon These are quite common all over France (mostly south, I think because they were less destroyed during the wars therefore they still exist. They are called "lavoir" in french if you want to look it up
Not sure how old is this habit but something laundry-related very traditional in Brazil is coconut (oil) soap. I know for sure it has been used at least since the early 1900s though. It's interesting because coconut oil is seen as exotic and luxurious in Europe and the US and here it's so associated with laundry to the point that perfume companies sort of avoid coconut notes in fragrances due to these connotations LOL I suppose the same applies to olive oil soap in the Mediterranean. Olive oil is expensive here and completely imported so it seems luxurious to me, but for a Spanish or Italian person it might have the same connotations as coconut soap has for us Brazilians. My late grandmother also knew how to make ''ash soap'' using lye made from wood ash as described in the video and lard, but it needed to be very well balanced or otherwise it would be incredibly corrosive to the point of hurting your hands when you used it.
That's so interesting! It makes complete sense. In the Western world, there seems to be that same connection with lavender and laundry, although that does end up in other things too.
Interesting, and something I didn't know, but of course people would use whatever fat was most easily available to them in their region - here in Denmark it was traditionally pig fat that was used to make soap. Somewhat different in fragrance, I would have imagined... "Smells like bacon... It must be laundry day!" (Joking, of course; rendered pork fat has very little if any smell, and presumably the more affluent people would have had their soap scented with whatever herbs were available.) Coconut soap sound like a nice smell, though. I could definitely imagine associating that with clean laundry.
It you make cold or hot process soap today using oils/fats and sodium hydroxide, you still need to have everything be incredibly balanced, it’s the same kinds of ingredients! Most modern soap companies do their detergent making in buy industrial vats so we just don’t get to see it. The saponification process is dependent on the strong base (lye) bonding with the oils or fats to create glycerin and fatty acids. Nowadays we have more exact ways of measuring and knowing exactly how much lye is in our lye solution, so you’re less likely to have an oil/fat heavy batch and get really oily, shitty soap, or have a lye-heavy batch that’s still caustic, but it’s more or less the same process.
One thing to note here... a lot of things that are cinsidered "linen" are made not from what we now consider linen but from a variety of plants. Nettle being a cheap one, especially for the poorer people (it spins beautifully, and was also called silk of the north/poor). Other plants were also used. Linen is made from what plants were available.
@Megan Von Ackermann it was propably used, and we now have dna (or something) research that tells us a lot of household items that were thought to be made from flax were nettle or hemp. Linen was a term for the type of item and not for the plant or fibre.
Thank you. I've watched a demonstration of the preparation of nettle fibres, here in Scotland, a lot of time and work but a good cloth eventually. With these old ways of producing things you can see how the division of labour made sense, though of course it led to many other problems of attitudes and beliefs that we have still not solved. This is a really good channel.
@@ragnkja that does depend on the preparation of the fibre. If i buy hemp fibre at the hardwear store i would not be able to spin a fine yarn from that. But there are people who can prepare hemp fibre so it can be quite soft. Those can be prepared by the spinner or as i do it, i buy the commercially processed stuff.
When my grandparents moved from their old to their new farm in rural Africa, there was only a single pipeline, meant for potable water only. So one sunny morning, we packed up every single piece of laundry around the farm, foods, drinks and the majority of the family and traipsed about half an hour into the rain forest to the nearest creek. Along with the two biggest cauldrons, soda and laundry detergent. We made a fire, boiled water and tossed in the soda/soap, dunked in first the bedsheets, then by and by the rest, as the soak grew cooler and less potent, since we continually replenished it with fresh water. The men would soak, the women pad and scrub and we kids would wring them out and spread them on the rocks and bushes for drying. By the time the pots et all were cleaned, most of the heavier pieces were dry and ready for transport. Ever since doing laundry by hand hasn't fazed me anymore...^^
Experiences like that will absolutely change perspective! I wish more people thought about that before romanticizing the past. Real people still use these methods, and they are WORK.
We went through a household stomach bug without a washing machine once when my kids were little. I washed so many items with a washboard that weekend. It has been years and I will still never underestimate how much pain and exhaustion laundry causes.
a bit of not-so-historical trivia: some medieval laundry practices survived at least until after WWII. I have vivid memories of seeing the linens from a “great wash” spread out on a stubble field to dry, with someone periodically sprinkling them with water to amp up the bleaching. And washing by hand in streams survived until at least the late 1960s in remote areas (or as “remote” as any area can be in western Europe). One would occasionally see fluffy clumps of bubbles floating down a stream, giving off the distinctive smell of OMO, a then-popular laundry detergent. Washing machines are recent, and pretty much universal access to washing machines (at least in wealthy countries) is even more recent.
Beating the laundry was still done in early 20th century here in Northern Europe, and even today every city in Finland has a communal place by a lake, the sea or a river for washing carpets. (Nowadays they even handle the sewage there, so the water wont get polluted.) It's just a traditional thing to do in the summertime, if you don't want to pay for having your carpets washed.
My mom, born in the SE MO Ozarks in 1911, regularly hung sheets and cotton quilts (underside up) out in the hot Kansas summer sun - as well as anything white with yellow age stains. This was a once a summer thing for her. I was tasked with keeping the stuff damp - not dripping wet) using the garden hose. She used the same method to bleach out bad underarm stains. You drape the garment on the line so that the underarm area is turned upward to catch all those sunbeams. I've done the same with cotton and linen blouses I've used as a dancer for folk dance parties or performances. Sometimes she would also add a bit of vinegar or lemon juice as a pretreatment. The sun treatment works very well. It also does a disgustingly good jab at fading colors - so hang colored clothing inside out!
Mom also grew up pumping water from a well, and stirring and boiling laundry in a big cauldron in the back yard, as well as other special treatments. She could wring fabric so dry you would think it had been through an extra wild spin cycle. She wasn't happy until I could wring things that dry, too. We had a washer, and indoor plumbing, so I skipped the other stuff. She also didn't teach me special treatments for special fabrics or stains - she went with modern, easier solutions. Although she sometimes felt some of the old ways worked a bit better.
@@sarahk5681 Omg yes, my bio-parents were part Roma (Gypsy) and my mom knew so many amazing traditional tips I wish I'd written down! Like -- when using lemon juice to treat whites, so they bleach in the sun, she'd always warn us not to splash any on our skin, because lemon juice has the reverse effect on skin -- it makes it more susceptible to tanning wherever it splashed. So if, for instance, you had splashes of lemon juice on your arms, you would end up with this weirdly-patchy tan by the end of the day. And if you were Irish (like a friend of mine who didn't tan easily) then the places where the lemon juice had been would get badly sunburned much, much faster than the rest of her exposed skin. Something about the lemon juice makes UV rays more easily absorbed, in clothing or skin.
Very interesting. One laundry anecdote that you may be interested in (although it may be a British thing only) is that the reason our biggest meal of the week is our Sunday roast is that Monday was traditionally wash day and so the cold left overs from Sunday were eaten on Monday when the woman of the house wouldn't have the time to cook. Also reading a book - The Golden Thread by Kassia St Clair - which is fascinating....but I love the added info from your video about St Claire! What a lovely coincidence.
@@SnappyDragon my copy is from my local library but I'm half way through and already feel I'll need to have my own copy to re read and refer too. There's so much interesting information for the sewer 😍📚
I'd suggest the connection would be more likely to be the other way around, given the big influence Christianity has had on western Europe, the roast is on Sunday because it's the day when everyone is guaranteed a day off work (except the housewife because most Christian groups aren't really strict about Sunday being a day of rest so long as you aren't doing paid work) the day after you've made a big meal to celebrate Sunday you have enough leftovers that you can take a day off cooking to do laundry.
My Dad says my grandma apparently used to still hand wash and use a mangle in a small rural village in Leicestershire in the 50s. My grandma also mentioned Monday was always wash day because you’d have Sunday roast leftovers.
The Nordics actually named a day laundry/wash day! We have the standard sun and moon day (Sunday/søndag, Monday/mandag) then the four primary Nordic gods: Tyr, Odin, Thor and Frej (Tuesday/tirsdag, Wednesday/onsdag (You English use Odin's Germanic name "Wotan") Thursday/torsdag and Friday/fredag) and then lørdag (from the old Nordic word for washing/laundry that was adopted by the English)
When my great-grandfather Gino got back home from an American prisoner of war camp (we are Italian) he saw how his wife and daughter did laundry the manual way, he got a big shock and bought a laundry machine immediately. Why? Because he as a PRISONER OF WAR had had a machine to do his laundry in the USA. And he could afford one...
Interestingly enough, woolen diaper covers are a staple in the more dedicated parts of the cloth diaper community. They are knitted from heavyweight unbleached raw wool, and usually have longish ribbed cuffs on the legs, They are very absorbent, and the lanolin in the wool reacts with the urine creating a form of soap. A cloth diaper - cotton today, but certainly linen in previous centuries - is worn underneath, mostly as a liner to catch any poops. As long as no feces or other dirt gets on the wool, the covers are not laundered, but when they are washed, they need to be lanolized, or conditioned with lanolin, before using again. Modern sensibilities dictate that cloth diapering parents do launder and re-treat the diaper covers every couple weeks, but rotating and airing them out between uses was probably much more common in the days before individual households had laundry facilities, and before the days of “rubber pants.” It probably helps that all babies wore long, loose-fitting dresses, essentially tiny chemises, until they were several years old. Surprisingly, they aren’t particularly stinky, which is saying a lot for diapers.
Me and my older sister wore such things as we were little. The were washed if need be, by hand, in lukewarm water. But usually, the cotton (muslin cloth) diaper would catch the wet and the solid refuse, unless there was a "mishapp". My youngest sister grew up with pampers diapers. Less work for my mum, but much more expensive, and more skin problems for my sister. At least thats what my mum told me retrospectively.
Wow. I still can't see how people safely used wool like that. My skin and eyes gets severely irritated (rashes and pink eye) from the wool blanket and clothing I used.
Love this! Back in the olde days when I was earning a medical/history degree, we were discussing disease and life expectancy. When most outer clothing was wool or silk and therefore not washable, people spot cleaned and aired their garments. Your chemise that was next to your skin was linen and washable. But do you know when life expectancy went up? When cotton cloth became affordable for the average person and could be changed and washed daily. So, being a bit of a smart-ass while writing a paper, I hypothesised that what our mothers told us about wearing clean underwear every day extended the lives of our foremothers.
Understanding how exactly diseases spread made a huge difference. Sure, dairy maids were meticulous about hygiene in the dairy, including their own hands, but until most people understood the importance of hygienic practices such as washing your hands after using the privies, faecal-oral pathogen spread was a lot more common.
Did the increased availability of cotton underwear coincide with improved water sanitation and sewerage ? I just wonder whether increased life expectancy was due more to those factors? Interesting proposition, thanks.
I like that theory 😂. Obviously we know that the price of a lot of things (including many types of basic food once non perishable foods like wheat could be shipped to Europe from North America along with the cotton) went down meaning better nutrition, plus improvements in urban sanitation cut infections like cholera.
“You don’t have to understand _how_ something works in order to understand that it _does_ work.” Modern medicine is still built on this principle. Yes, it’s nice and often useful to understand how a treatment works, but in order to help people as much as possible, this isn’t required for a treatment to become available. As long as it’s confirmed to be safe (and of course, new treatments, medications and vaccines are watched carefully after approval as well, just in case some rarer harmful side effect was missed during the trial stages) and more effective than a placebo, that’s “all” it takes.
Such a great point! 👍🏽 I've worked as a MRVS ("mervs", medical research volunteer subject) -- women can sometimes get paid extra well, because so many trials were previously only on men -- and there are so many times when something works and no one understands why. This is also why double blind studies are so important, and why I wish people would read the story of "Clever Hans" before perusing VAERS! Humans are pattern-seeking mammals, who tend to attribute coincidence to cause, and that's a huge problem with VAERS. And especially since the pandemic started, it's become even more complicated.
It's sad that wool and linen are seen as ''luxury fabrics'' nowadays when they would make such good everyday clothes. If you can't sew the cost of ready to wear clothes with these fabrics (at least in my country) are prohibitive, while you can wear 100% cotton or viscose on a budget. I don't know much about the production processes of wool and linen nowadays but I can't imagine it would be as costly as silk for example (which has always been luxurious and expensive). I also read stories about sheep farms throwing away wool because there wasn't demand for it.
One of my favorite fleeces to spin was acquired when I had a very limited budget but somehow decided I needed to learn to prepare a fleece anyway. The cheapest fleece I could find came from a seller who sells wool from her neighbor, who generally just burn the wool from their sheep other than the few fleeces that are sold by the lady. Now, it's not the finest wool nor the easiest to prepare, but it still makes me sad to know that there is wool going to waste in such a way when wool garments are so much more expensive.
Linen can be made with either flax or hemp. Flax grows in cold climates, but hemp doesn't. The problem is that hemp was seen as competition to cotton production, therefore it was demonized. I think we need to bring hemp back. Growing cotton is very bad for the environment (and people).
While price and budget definitely matter, I think people should see clothes as an investment, more than they typically do now. In some countries like the US, fast fashion has encouraged people to see clothes as disposable (cheap fabrics not made to last and at dirt cheap prices). Many people will buy something they only wear a couple times, or will think they should replace their clothes after a short time even though their old clothes are still fine. You can't treat wools, linens, and silks this way, unless you want to waste a ton of money. Clothes made of these fabrics need to be bought thoughtfully with the intent to wear them for a long time, not as a trendy piece you'll never wear again after a couple months.
You don't have to go back to the middle ages to appreciate your laundry machine. I remember back in the 50s living in a village in the Netherlands, my mother doing laundry. Pots of diapers boiling on the stove. She had a mangle I was not allowed to touch for fear of getting crushed fingers. All of the laundry was dried outside, the diapers covered the little lawn we had. My mother didn't get a washing machine until the 60s. She and my aunts were very happy to toss out all the linen sheets, shirts and such for easy to launder poly cotton. They didn't need ironing, you do know that linen sheets should be ironed? The modern linen look of wrinkles is not period for any part of history. It needs to be wrinkle free and starched crisp to keep the wrinkles away. You forgot that whole day of ironing and starching. That was my job as a young teen.
@@emmabennett7699 yes we have the latest front loader and matching dryer stacked. Knitwear also doesn't need ironing. I actually don't mind ironing that much but not pants .... I hate pressing pants.
@@SnappyDragon yes I have too. Modern is wrinkled to show it is natural! My mother's friend from norway gave me all her old linen sheets she had gotten for her wedding, lovely soft fabric with white on white embroidery at the tops. She also adored poly cotton large sheets for king sized beds, these sheets were narrow and made for single, not twin, sized small beds. They made the little beds and pushed them together to make the marriage bed.
The fact that laundress of the medieval ages was essentially bat wield alchemy using badass who freaked out the patriarchy makes me so happy. I am equally happy that I don't have to deal with the fun that is my period in the said time. Give me modern times for that 100%
Thank you so much for this much needed giggle/romp through history as I struggle to fold my laundry while coughing my lungs out (the plague that ravages this land finally caught me).
My washer actually broke the day you published this (frozen pipes in a rental place). So we had to hand ring out literally all the towels in the house (most had been being washed, the rest had to dry up the water that went everywhere). It was such not only a forearm workout but also required so much grip strength! Those laundresses must have been so buff! After ringing out most of the water we brought it to my mom's to be washed. The wet clothes were so heavy I couldn't lift the basket my husband had to. We'll still be several days without a washer while they fix it so I definitely appreciate modern laundry methods more now.
~16:04 Tangential, but a fun fact regarding historical European gender roles I learned recently was that early male colonists in Virginia were often reluctant to grow maize, because even though within their own European gender roles farming was a perfectly masculine activity, within Powhatan society it was something only women did, and they thus adopted the view that it was "women's work" despite the contradiction with British norms.
My grandma was not Powhatan, but Pueblo and she said that the maize is like the archetypal essence of femininity. In traditional cultures there's often a spiritual significance behind the division of labor. But it's less practical in modern times. As an enby I'm uncomfortable with gender roles.
I'm grateful for modern refrigeration, healthcare, family planning, and yes, laundry. Also, I now understand why the laundresses at the Renaissance Faire were some of the bawdiest ladies there (and therefore some of my favorites).
Wool sock devotee here, and I swear by Darn Tough. They're super durable (this winter, I finally wore holes in several pairs I'd been wearing regularly since... 2017, probably?) and come in lots of different weights appropriate for different uses and weather. I wash them on the gentle cycle and hang dry them and have had no issues with shrinking/felting, etc. Pricier than cotton socks, but well worth it, and much less smelly! I lived in Mongsolia for a year, and while I had friends who had washing machines (the kind you have to fill from and then empty into the sink), I did not. So while I schlepped my sheets, towels, and sweatshirts over to those friends' houses, I found myself doing small amounts of laundry a couple times a week in a tumpin (a large, shallow bucket) with soap, water, and a washboard. I very quickly found myself developing habits that I now know mimicked historical ones: wearing camis under everything to absorb sweat, lots of wool, changing into something easily laundered as soon as I got home, hanging up the nice work clothes to air out, and wearing them several to many times between launderings. Between the constant chore of laundry and the struggle to clean dust, dirt, and hair out of a wool carpet with a straw broom, I returned with a PROFOUND appreciation for washing machines and vacuum cleaners!
I actually knit a lot with wool. There's a process now for something called superwash wool, where you can throw the wool item in the wash without it getting felted (thus the super wash). Also wool socks, knitted ones at least, are amazing. Something really cool to look into for medieval fashion would be waterproofing, because they did a process called lanolizing, where basically after they harvested the lanolin from sheep, they'd then put lanolin in wool items to make them waterproof. Great for surviving a rainy day. Another fun fact about wool, it can hold more than it's own weight of water, so women falling into a river was absolutely dangerous, as their clothes were most likely to weigh them down and drown them. Another fun fact, the only permanent dye prior to our modern day ones way Tyrian/Phoenician Purple, made from mollusks. Scientists today are still trying to understand how a non synthetic dye has such lasting power.
Unfortunately many methods to make wool superwash include coating it in synthetic polymers ;_;. Meaning your are still wearing plastic around, shedding microplastic and you can't composte your socks if they die- also the process before the coating needs a lot of toxic chemicals. This does not show at all on the packaging, and even the branded wools sell it as an advantage. It totally sucks. I made a few pairs using superwash and wash them in my micro plastic collecting wash bag, at least a bit can be caught by that. But the waterproofing in lanolin works good, you just mix a spoonfull in a bucket with some dishsoap and dunk your wools in, it even reduces the scratchyness of brand new harris tweed. The water sits on top of the fabric instead of soaking in. Oh and it holds up a few washes with detergent before you have to repeat it (no change after cold water rinses, though). I got mine at the pharmacy.
@@mirabellegoldapfel6256 That's sad about superwash. . . But good to know. I don't use wool much (scratchy!) but I do spin dog fur, and some breeds have thick double coats that yield amazing yarn. It's as warm as wool, but doesn't have the scratchiness that drives me crazy. A friend of mine works at a grooming salon and she keeps the fur that the double-coated dogs "blow" every spring, because we only have two dogs, and one is 4 pounds lol. Washed and carded and spun into yarn, it doesn't have any of the "doggy" scent, and it's a beautiful and natural fiber. Almost anything one can do with wool, one can do with dog fur, and the natural colors are also so gorgeous! We made a winter coat for our tiny dog, from fur from our big dog, and she loves it! And they look adorable when they're out together.
@@zxyatiywariii8 Aww so the big dogs fur now warms the wee one, thats cute! I don't have dogs, but thats really nice recycling. The furthest I do is compost my combed out own hair, lol. There is a shepherd with a herd of (probably scratchy wool) sheep on an ex army area in my town since a few years, maybe I'll try this year to get a fleece and learn carding and spinning (got a hand spindle at the christmas market). I think if I wash the wool very gently a lot of lanolin will stay and reduce the itchiness. I can always pick up the little twigs and leaves by hand. A the very least, one can always line the garments or wear a linen thing underneath, like in ye olde times. If it smells too sheepy, one can always try the... rustic method. I do middle age live role play games, campfire and everything and smoke covers everything. So does good incense, like sandalwood, too.
French here, you translated the "pêcheur aux lavandières" bit correctly, it does mean "fisherman of washerwomen" , sounding like it's their speciality as if it was a particular type of fish xD It was amazing to learn all this history, especially the technical parts about soap and chemicals they used :D For the drying, i know that in my region of France (Dauphiné, near Lyon ) the temperatures are pretty low and it rains a lot, so the place where people would do laundry (the "lavoir" , a place with big pools, usually two : one for soaping and one for rincing ) would be covered with a roof - so after wringing the sheets out, they could hang them to dry protected from the rain! They are also a lot of covered marketplaces , so if the whole village did their laudry on the same day, they could still possibly all hang their clothes to dry x). Maybe those lavoirs were build a bit later than medieval times tho, i havent checked :) Also, even this comment is getting way too big : the part about washerwomen being violent reminded me of a spooky Briton folktale about "les lavandières de la nuit" - the night's washerwomen. Basically, if you go out in the Briton countryside late at night, and go by a river you might meet strange figures dressed in white doing laundry. If you don't run away fast, one of the washerwoman will ask you (not very politely) to help her wring out a huge sheet ....and then as you start wringing she'll twist the sheet so hard it will tore away both your arms at once! Then the ghost washerwomen will disappear, leaving you for dead D: I feel like that tale was inspired by real life events x) thanks again for the great video!!
I can for good reason only talk for my own country, Denmark, here the practice of sleeping without your clothes was a big part of cleanliness too - and for longer than in many places around us. This was common practice in the farming communities (I don't know about how widespread it was otherwise). Not so much in relation to laundry but it meant that most of the pests (lice, ticks etc.) would die over night as the clothes would hang in the cold air. It meant that Jutland (the only part of Denmark that's landfast to the rest of the continent) went relatively free of some of the deceases until hired soldiers starting coming in in larger amounts in the 17th-18th century. The practice was still there when my grandfather was a small child, granted he grew up as one of the poorest in a poor rural part of the country.
That's so fascinating! I've been hearing so much about how people in colder climates made use of the naturally-occurring outdoor freezer they had, and I love it. I grew up in New England, also with cold weather, and if we ran out of room in the fridge or freezer during winter, we'd just put things outside in the snow, sealed up so the squirrels couldn't get them.
@@SnappyDragon Yup! Snow is perfect for laundering! (There's a reason it's advisable today to freeze your jeans and woolen clothes if you really want them to last - unless there are stains then you of course wash) We don't get much snow in Denmark anymore though. But it's still cold enough in winter to be refrigerator-cold. I have drinks and such on my balcony as we speak as it's close to 5c/41f in winter. No need to spend electricity on that at least.
We also defrost our freezers when it's 0 or below. you just pop the frozen goods outside (in shade) and it'll be fine and not de-thawed when you are done.
There's a memoir by a Polish petty nobleman and soldier from the 17th century. He travelled a lot with the army and they did get to somewhere near Denmark where he got to stay with a local family and made a note of them sleeping naked and undressing with the candle on, in front of everybody, even guests. He wrote that Polish soldiers teased the locals about it saying that in Poland a woman wouldn't undress herself like that even in front of her husband - so definitely not at a thing at least in our (ie. Polish) neck of the wood. They gave him basically the same answer you give here too - it gives the clothes a chance to air and they don't bring in any bugs to the bed. He also notices the wardrobe-style beds where you can climb in and shut the door from the room. And says that Danish women were attractive and prone to fall in love quickly, but the clogs that everyone wore made a hell of a noise, haha! ;-)
I love wool socks, especially in winter. No idea what the brand available at Costco is, but they are wonderful. And as for knitted socks, a little fulling from the laundry doesn't hurt, it just makes them a bit sturdier
My roommate washed a pair of woolen socks in the laundry and they shrank. She did not dry them obviously. But those were hand-knitted. So probably stretching them out first would have helped that.
@@kitdubhran2968 you can get blocking frames for socks so they get their shape back as they dry. They’re either solid pieces or a wire outline in the shape of a sock, and they (obviously) come in pairs.
@@ReneePowell I’ve got tiny feet and massive calves/ankles. So I’ll probably put mine on and spray them wet and let them dry on me. (When it’s warmer) We’re still working on stretching the socks out until they’re useable again. But that’s a lesson she’s learned for next time. 😭
I learned about wool socks in Army basic training as our socks were 100% wool and amazingly comfortable even on long marches in a hot climate. They never got stinky and didn’t hold water like cotton. Which kept your feet from blistering. I wear them now in the wintertime because I like to wear Birkenstocks year round and even in the US south that gets chilly. Never had an odor problem though these are not usually 100% wool.
Textile enthusiast (dye, spin, weave, felt and knit) here to say... wool doesn't mind heat, I dye wool all the time in simmering temperature water. It's agitation and rapid temperature changes cause felting and therefore shrinkage in wool garments. Don't agitate and allow your wet woollens to cool slowly and you'll be right, swish them around and/or dunk them into cold water and you will get felting.
Wool only felts when the scales on the hairs hook into each other, and while hot water (and especially hot, soapy water) makes the scales stick out more, making them more “grabby”, it won’t cause the wool to felt unless the fibres rub against each other so that the scales have something to hook into.
This is going to sound weird, but a friend of mine has lots of wool and she loves it (I don't wear much wool myself so I can't say): As you mentioned, the scales on each strand of wool need to grab onto each other in order to felt, so after she soaks her woolen things -- with NO agitation -- she uses a product called "After U Bathe" (made for dogs) which flattens down and "closes" the scales on each hair. (It's fun to compare the hairs under magnification and see the change between the "open", grabby scales and the flatter, "closed" scales.) It's from Chris Christensen and Amazon carries it.
there is a reason why the first electric appliance both sets of grandparents bought once they could afford them were washing machines. before that doing laundry was a whole day of bone breaking hard labour.
My grandparents had hand operated wash tubs with wringer rollers above the tub do the water would run back into the tub. When they finally got electricity, there was a motor they could fit onto the washer to do the agitating and turning the rollers.
Yeah its true they used "Amonia" from urine to wash their clothes in the beginning. But when their knights came back from the crusades, they brought back two very valuable things a: Roses (and perfume oils and the recipe how to produce them) and b: SOAP! Because the people in the Middle East were not only much more forward in medicine, art and science, they also already knew how to produce soap! The recipe was brought back to Marseille (France) and from there the production of the world famous "Savon de Marseille" started. Through merchants and ships large parts of europe were delivered with soap and the town of Marseille got rich and famous with their soap production. There were only two kinds of Soaps available for centuries: the mild, green one, (containing 70 % olive oil) is mild enough to eaven wash a new born baby and it was meant to wash hands, face, hair and body and the white one was used to wash clothes, the floor, and eaven the dishes (this white soap is today known as core-soap and still used in some hoseholds!) These soaps were so popular, that King Louis IV released a law to legally protect the original medieval recipe and production of the original Savon de Marseille from copycats. This tradtional soap was used for many centuries until industrialisation came up with soap production and adding artificial fragrance and fancy colours into soaps. But before, there was litterally no other soap available. My grandmother still used it for washing and cleaning and really its super good, very effective, super gentle and much better than most "modern soaps", you just have to get used to the strong Olive smell of the green one. If you would like to try "original medieval soap" you can still buy the original arabic "Aleppo-Soap" or the original "Savon de Marseille", produced in france since the medieval times in unchanged recipe.. oh, and: its vegan too...
I started my own sauerkraut ferment this week and was struck by how therapeutic breaking down the cabbage was. Perhaps laundry served a dual function. 😂
In Scandinavia to this day, beginning from the iron age, the day that is called Saturday is still called Wash day in their different languages, though all having the same root, while the other days were all named after various gods of their pantheon. And yes, even Sunday and Monday have their names rooted in Sunna/Sol, the Sun Goddess and Mani, the Moon God, we forget that these days. Iron age to medieval Scandinavians, unlike the rest of the known Europeans lived a very clean life with at least one major wash, like having a bath, a week, unlike some of their neighbours annual wash, which even filtered into the bathing habits of the settlers in what was to become the USofA. Bleaching sheets in sunlight was very important, spreading sheets on grassy meadows wasn't just done to make the sheets dry faster, but also because sunlight was seen to have a detrimental effect on any remains of bugs or their eggs having survived the process of laundering. Lice and fleas and other similar nasties were a common and daily contact which good laundering could help minimise. I too am in the process of replacing my cotton/polycotton sheets with linen, but I live in Europe, so sadly I cannot take up your offer. Instead I buy my linen fabric from a local fabric shop and finish them myself with handsewing. And yes, they are a dream to sleep in, and they get marvelously softer over time without loosing noticeable substance. Thank you for your fun and informative video, I enjoyed it greatly.
Things I appreciate not having to do the old fashioned way: EVERYTHING! Cooking on an electric stove, cleaning with a vacuum cleaner and universal soap, showering in a bathroom, sleeping in a bug-less bed with box springs, driving in a horseless car, calculating with a device, reading by electric light, sowing, buying my clothes and yarn, buying my clothes.... Basically I really appreciate being a millennial!
@@SnappyDragon my childhood was way better than my parents' and immensely better than my grandparents' My my maternal grandmother starved as a child and my maternal grandfather was sent from home to work at a farm at 9-10 years old! My paternal grandparents were much better off, but still nowhere near the luxuries we surround ourselves with! Alas those luxuries will be our downfall, they are too hard to give up, even if it would be better for the climate 😞
@@annejeppesen160 Poverty and hunger exist today as well. If you look at Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, many countries in Africa or LatinAmerica, or India you can see all the starving children. During the pandemic, even in Britan and the US many poor families were food insecure. So many children starve in spite of our wealth. It was , and still is, more a problem of distribution of resources, and the consequences of war, than of technology.
Its what people sometimes fail to understand. Having an stay at home mom was an necessity: cooking, cleaning, washing, reshaping the straw bed and taking care of any kids was an full time thing. For cooking you had to light and tend the fire, to clean and wash you either would go to an river, if you wanted an hot bath you had to heat the water in the fire and mixed with cold water in the bathtub(bathing one's husband was an intimate moment very common on medieval books on love) and etc. Can you fit an 9-5 in this? Now, it took less since homes were multi-branch and multi-generational so this became kinda became an group job in the peasants casa and noble women had their servants.
I 100% agree with the last comment. How its it that we have a washer and dryer but still dont have a machine that folds the laundry for us. This is the 21st century! I want my laundry to fold itself for a change! All joking aside when my husband and it were first married our elderly neighbor who grew up during the Great Depression talked about how once a week they would gather up all the laundry in the house and haul it down to the creek with all the other women in town and how it was an all day affair. It was actually something they looked forward too. It was also the day they washed their hair. They would wash their hair first then start hauling buckets of water to the tub where they would scrub the clothes. The clothes were then put through a wringer and hauled to the creek to be rinsed. Then they could hang them up on the clothes lines. She told me that while the work was back breaking it was also a good excuse to hang out with your friends. When she got married and had her first washing machine, she said she felt like she was missing out on something. Me personally i'm not sure I could do it. My husband works union which means blue collar worker. Let me tell you just exactly how band his clothes, especially his pants and socks, can smell it the end of the day of he has been stuck outside working on something in the brutal Arizona sun in the middle of summer. I can imagine having to have that sitting around for a week waiting for was day. In to of that i have 5 kids, 2 of which are teenagers. In case you didn't know, they stink! Deodorant is a life savior otherwise you can smell them from a mile away. I am very grateful for having a washer and dryer. Especially since my washer started leaking just in time for lock down. It was nearly two months before we could get someone to come out and fix the part. It was small at first but after a month I was doing laundry in the bath tub with dawn dish soap. I couldn't even got into town to a self serve laundromat. Not fun, especially with my husband's smelly work clothes. 0 out of 10 it do not recommend doing laundry in the bathtub. Not fun.
VEGETABLE LAMB! I’m so glad you included that little reference. As a person whose grandparents actually owned a cotton gin, I can honestly understand how medieval Europeans thought it was basically sheep plants.
I first saw this image in a high school world history class and have been *waiting* to use it ever since. I'm only disappointed I couldn't find a reason to run on about its place in Jewish mythology!
I've always wanted a modern re-imagining of that illustration, preferably in a cute/cartoony art style. T-shirt, tote bag, mug... beginner spinning kit with a tahkli spindle and a few punis of natural colored cotton... it's just such an adorable visual.
Both wool and linen (to a lesser extent) have antibacterial properties. This is why they hold up better against all types of body odor which is caused by the bacteria living naturally on our skin. Also wool performs well even when wet (think sweat or rain). When I discovered this about wool , I never went back to cotton socks though I still own a few pairs that coordinate with specific outfits. Another great thing about wool is that it can be used to prevent chafing. You can take a bit of loose wool and place it over any irritated spot on your foot then put your regular footwear on and feel the relief. Most wool socks available for sale today are knitted and can be washed (and sometimes dried) in laundry machines. A few clothing manufacturers have knit linen items available (think t-shirts and knickers) which are also well worth the investment for a comfortable stink-free modern wardrobe. Thanks for the video!
Ooh. That's probably why my wool socks are still alive then! I've been washing them with everything else and they're still alive, and I wash clothes way more often than most people since I'm a germophobe
@@nancylindsay4255 I found some t-shirts that are knit linen at Gap sometime last year which is the most recent. Other than that, I found a knit linen skirt about 15 years back from one of those stores that gets the stuff that didn't sell from other stores. I have not purchased them, but I have seen knit linen knickers for sale at various online stores. Good luck!
@@acash93 Legs and especially feet can usually tolerate wool better than the rest of the body. I can wear wool tights, but need a barrier garment under my wool jumpers or else my skin turns bright red and itchy.
When our family moved to Spain in 1971 our clothes were hand washed by the maid. She brought up water in a bucket from the well then washed the clothes on the cement washboard made into the cement well. As a child I was fascinated by this.
I love that you have real captions. As a Deaf person they make a huge difference compared to the autocraptions. It's a little hard to read the things up on the screen as well as the captions (not just in this video, in your other videos too) but it's still worlds above what most people do, which is...nothing. They don't even set up their videos to allow the autocraptions to happen. So I appreciate your effort in captioning immensely.
Thank you so much! I don't understand why anyone *wouldn't* have real captions, when your entire video is scripted it takes two seconds to upload them.
It feels very apropos that I'm watching this video while doing my ironing 😂 very grateful for my electric iron that does NOT require being heated up on the stove/by the fire and to literally be pressed down on the fabric.
I've used stove-heated irons, not for clothes, but for hair while getting my hairdressing license. They are *terrifying.* If that was what I had, I would have burn marks everywhere including on my hands.
And the soap is exactly why I chose to go with the costly castille soap when I did my medieval skincare routine. I sure do put my skin through a lot, but I wasn't risking chemical burns on my face. Also now that I'm working on that farm, lets just say I honestly love using the clothes line. I very often forget things in the dryer, so having them flapping right in front of my face sure does remind me to bring in the linens.
I have done laundry the old fashion way in my culture and could never understand the method portrayed in movies in pre washing machine periods: dumping everything in one tub. Not all laundry is created equally and doesn't need equal treatment. All laundry is separated in different piles and you start with the least dirty a couple garments at a time and keep watching the water. When the water needs changing you start from the beginning again. So you wash the least dirty garments a second time and continue the first proces of adding garments and watching the water. When you need to change the water, your rinse the twice washed clothes first and continue the proces. So each new water is used 3 times. Wash, second wash, rinsing. The time in between doesn't mock the water as much and gives the clothes time a mini soak. So if you need a washing board or bat you used it during the second wash. Even if clothes need soaking you wash them first or else they would be just marinating in their dirt. I thought to be smart and wash the clothes once and rinse them and live to regret it. Time is very important in getting the clothes clean so I am not very impressed with all the quick wash features on the washing machine. The more time you take the less violence you need the longer you clothes will last. Like soaking your pot overnight instead of scrubbing the non stick coating off....
Many people still use lemon juice and sun bleaching for baby clothes. I have made soap from soapwort. It is brown and smells vaguely like beer, but surprisingly doesn’t make laundry smell.
As a kid in Central America (Costa Rica in the mid 1970s) our clothes were hand washed. There was a special type of soap used for this that looked like a block of styrofoam with blue specs that you could obtain from any pulperia (country store). The wet clothes were worked with the soap outside in a cement basin and then hung up to dry. I do not remember a washing board or anything like that. I cannot remember further details because I was only seven, but it was apparently effective and I have seen photos of Spain in the 1930s that showed a similar looking activity.
@@ragnkja i tried googling online and found a few pictures of communal washing sheds with women at work. Some from the 1920s. I only remember an individual basin for our house but it otherwise looks typical. The basin is called a pila. I found a mexican detergent for sale online (brand roma) which was powdered but was similarly white with blue specs (the ultramarine as you say) and had a picture of a woman sitting at her basin illustrated on the bag.
Here in spain soap was usually made from animal fat rather than olive oil since olives and olive oil were more expensive. It was made adding caustic soda (Sodium hydroxide) to it.
Totally fascinating history - Thank you as always! I'm sure you're right that the phrase "airing someone's dirty laundry" arises from the laundry practices of this era. Also, I'm always in awe of how enormously strong our ancestors must have been, before there were machines & electricity to help accomplish daily physical work.
The woman front and center in the picture at Timestamp 2:00, the dress she's wearing is the inspiration for the first Renaissance dress my husband ever made me. We are historical reenactors from Denmark and he is a historical tailor. It is so beautiful.
Where can I sign the "cotton gets smelly during the day" agreement? Not to mention the "dirt" in armpits on white cotton blouses.... I learned a lot and I think I'll go pet the washing machine. It might feel a bit lonely 🤣🤣🤣🤣😉
I always thank mine! After an old one broke down and I had two kids in primary school with sports and activities! (in the bathtub with detergent and a good old stomp without my trousers!) Hence, these days, it gets a gentle pat on the front and a "Thank you!".
Aquí en México usaban la raíz de una planta que se llama "palmilla", esa raíz producía jabón al mojarse y la vendían en los mercadillos. Es algo similar a las semillas de jabón que ahora son populares en Europa. Se dejó de usar esta raiz ya que la planta está en peligro de extinción ya que se usaba también para hacer sacos para café.
Natural fibers are amazing but it's a pity quality wool and linen aren't more affordable and accessible. I can attest to (merino) wool base layers, not just socks, standing up well against odors even after multiple uses. And for a historical task that's significantly easier now... all I can say is thank god for safety razors. Straight razors last for ages and can provide a great shave but what a nerve-wracking time sink.
I seem to be allergic to either the wool itself, something it’s been treated with, or the wool detergent, so I can’t wear it directly against my skin, at least not on the arms and torso. With a barrier garment, my wool jumpers have become essential for warmth, however, and I wear wool far more often than not.
@@tylerrobbins8311 Even my own hair can cause such reactions if it ends up against my neck and/or chest at night when I let it down (but still keep it braided)l or else it would tangle too much) for the night, so it’s probably not an allergy to a particular species.
Having a laundry machine in the kitchen and opening the window to hang the clothes on the line to dry is something I can't complain. Another thing I love not to make the medieval way is walking 10 km to go to the market and another 10 km back home with a basket of food on my head.
I’ve loved watching Ruth Goodman docos! She almost always explored period laundry which I’ve always found fascinating, & ‘History’s Worst Jobs’ had laundry in the medieval era as one of the worst jobs - Stuart Townsend did a mini-series on laundry in the 18th c, with a re-enactor who’s character story was both fascinating & kind of sad....
@@SnappyDragon Omg! I feel seen! Lol It feels like they don’t make that quality of documentary anymore, which is a bit sad- but, finding so many of them on UA-cam- as well as people like Townsend, Morgan Donner, & yourself has been fantastic!
I can empathize with all your health issues. I have been living with all the same for 30 years now. (I'll soon be 70) And I am so glad you made this video. I know what it's like to NEED your bed to be as comfortable as possible. I hope to order these sheets soon! Thank you so much for making this video and I wish you many comfortable nights as well.
Very interesting video! As for things in probably don't want to do the medieval way but are interested in knowing: how did the means of carrying stuff around evolve? This means external stuff like purses, baskets, backpacks, etc., but also pockets in clothes.
I am glad I live in the modern age... I wash and dry my clothing in a machine, and then separate them into baskets based on what they are. I find folding my clothes to be more then I can handle, and so the basket method works for all except the few things I own that would then require being ironed (and usually also need to be dry-cleaned).
Another interesting and entertaining lesson from my favorite history teacher! My own experiences with wool and cotton socks agree with your conclusions. Woolen socks are the way to go. As a hobby cabinet maker, I’m more than happy I don’t need to chop a tree, saw and plane planks, and drill holes all by hand 🙏. Thanks V!
Many of your tools are also a lot more affordable because the people making them have access to consistent materials (e.g. steel of a particular composition) and labour-saving equipment. Saws, for example, used to be so expensive that they would only be used when you couldn’t get away with using a bladed tool.
Absolutely, that’s a great addition. It’s almost the polar opposite of today’s economics. Labor was very inexpensive, material was expensive and tools were precious.
@@Harko- That’s because the materials themselves required a lot more labour to source or produce. The flush-trimming saw (which would probably have been the _only_ saw your medieval counterpart owned) is an example of something that was expensive because of the labour involved in making it. Take a look at one: For the medieval version, every single tooth would have been shaped and sharpened by hand.
@@ragnkja Saws teeth must be set and filed by hand, it's a lengthier process than sharpening a hatchet or a chisel. Carpenters that work with hand tools nowadays still follow the rule of "easiest tool to sharpen used first". Up to the early 20th century in France, we used mostly frame saws that require very little metal. They were not more expensive than a hatchet or plane iron from the blacksmith, they were more labor intensive to maintain. The cheat we have today are cheap saws with hardened steel teeth that you throw away after a few years. But good quality saws still need sharpening.
Interesting and fun, thank you! In the UK only 58% own a dryer, so it’s pretty normal to dry clothes on a washing line outside when the weather is good and on an airer inside when it’s wet and cold outside. I do find the clothes are nice and fresh when they are dried in the sun. It’s always a gamble with the British summertime weather, though! My dryer never gets sheets as dry as they would be on the line.
@@SnappyDragon Probably a foldable drying rack. They are a pretty standard household item in Germany as well. Even people who have dryers often use them for part of their laundry. Both because this increases longevity of your clothes and because electricity is so expensive here, you can actually see the difference in your monthly bill. Living alone in a small flat, I don't even own a dryer, but drying clothes in winter (when the balcony mostly isn't an option) is very annoying. I can only do it on the weekend, pretty much, because it has to be in the morning and I have to be home most of the day, to open the windows frequently. Otherwise I will get water dripping from my windowpanes and mold eventually. It's very annoying. With temperatures just above or below freezing and very high humidity most of the time, I can't imagine outside drying having been an option in Northern Europe in winter. Even if it didn't rain. Let's say, you're done with the washing process by noon or so...your laundry won't be dry by nightfall. No way. And the next morning, it will be soaked by dew or covered in white frost, depending on the temperature and pretty wet again. It might have been an option in clear, cold weather, but we don't have that very often here. They must have dried stuff inside, in a room heated by a fireplace.
same here, ie. in Poland. Maybe some fancy people are getting driers these days, but I've never seen them anywhere and generally you just have a drying rack (that you'll put out outside if you have a garden or a balcony). Sun-dried laundry, especially linen, smells wonderful!
@@raraavis7782 Temperatures around 0°C or 32 F° are difficult to dry laundry, but strong frost is really good for drying. The colder, the better. This knowledge was used before, you can check it out in the autobiographic book by Laura Ingalls Wilder called "The Long Winter". I live in Germany, and can dry my stuff outside until November, and then again with really cold nights in January or February. But in most years it is impossible to dry laundry during the twelve nights of Xmas, or "Raunächte". They are neither cold enough, nor warm enough for it.
Here in northen Sweden where I live, we did the laundry twice a year. Which usually happened spring and autumn/fall. Linjen wasn’t commonly used either, likely since flax don’t grow here and had to be bought with money. Money that barely existed among the settlers and Saamis in historical times.
There is an old saying in Spanish: _La mancha de la mora con la verde se quita._ "The dark (red) stain is removed by the green." This refers to the technique of using green grape juice to remove stains (wine stains in this instance), but it also became a love metaphor. There are a number of traditional Spanish songs that quote this saying, by it meaning that if your heart is stained (broken), a new (green) love will remove the stain, i.e., clean (mend) it.
For a few years I didn't have a washing machine, and would do my laundry by hand at home (in the style of the 19th century). That was the most in shape I've ever been and I absolutely hated laundry day! Thinking of doing it the medieval way (even with a wringing post, as I saw every time I saw Tales From The Green Valley...it makes me happy that someone else watched and enjoyed it!) makes my muscles hurt just to think about.
Doing medieval living history for work, I can confirm that wool hose hold up rather well with simply airing them out between wears! Their biggest enemy in my case is mud, because my shoes aren't quite watertight, and if the weather has been particularly nasty I might well find a bit of grime on the inside as well. My best fix is letting them dry, brushing off whatever I can, and then soaking just the feet in cold water for a while, maybe brushing again after.
When you think about it, imagine how many story telling posibilities fashions related to medieval clothing cleaning are opened when you know this: women who build their entire career about this and those who can vent their frustration about other story aspects by slapping clothes, or you've called that. Long story short: I'm glad I'm subscribed. This channel is inspiring.
I'm on my third load of the day, so perfect timing for sure. Thanks for the flashback 🙃 I grew up in the country and hung out the laundry to dry... I can remember my mother dashing out the door to pull in the wash when it would start to rain.
May your wash be easy! I do kind of want a clothesline because my linen things are always less wrinkly when they air-dry. But I have the advantage of living someplace where it doesn't rain for 8 months of the year 😅
I think this Brooklinen sponsorship is one of the few I've seen from a yt channel that I'm actually interested in! I'm autistic and one of my big issues is textures, so I'll have to see if I can deal with the linen texture before it gets soft too, but if not, it can go on the guest bed until then 😂 and... frankly I don't have the energy to wash & change my sheets as often as I probably should, so bring less absorbent of sweat & oils is also good to hear. Also very interesting & informative video! I just don't have anything constructive to comment about it, heh.
I’m also autistic, and since I wash my hair once a week, I change my pillowcase every week and the sheet and duvet cover every two (sometimes three) weeks. Using a matching pillowcase when I change everything and a non-matching one when I only change the pillowcase is an easy way to tell where in the cycle I am. It’s a bit tiring to do, especially if I leave it until late at night, though, because I have a weighted duvet with 9 kg of steel chains in it.
IDK if having swatches to feel would be helpful, but the Brooklinen fabric is very similar to Dharma Trading's 3.8 and 4.7oz linen, and Dharma does do swatches!
Amazing video! This was so fascinating to learn! (Italian idiot here, the "e" at the end of italian and latin words is pronounced, in the case of lavare it's a closed e and it's pronounced like the "a" in say.) Thank you so much for the different references through the video!
There are so many things that come to mind when I think of things I'm glad I don't have to do the Medieval way (and I'm sure many more that I take for granted so much that I haven't thought of them) but aside from the more immediately necessary things, it's writing. I cannot imagine trying to write my novel by hand on paper from start to finish, including all my outlines and notes that I am constantly reorganizing with relative ease thanks to Ctrl X and Ctrl V. Not to mention that even if I did like to write by hand like some authors do, I have access to all the paper I could possibly need. It would be awful to have writing ideas but nowhere to write them down because I'd run out of paper and cell phones weren't to be invented for 500 years.
I'm glad you did an ad for brooklinen, I love their sheets. It's great you can buy individual sheets too, I just buy two flat sheets because I don't like fitted sheets. Needed new sheets anyway. Great video.
Aww, thank you! Feel free to hang onto the link in the description; it's not an affiliate link but it does tell them I'm a good person to work with if it gets used!
One additional fact about medieval clothes, especially in the upper classes. They would have many gowns to choose from, so when they took one off, a maid would then powder the inside of the gown to discourage fleas and lice, and put them away in chests, so you’re not overstating the necessary use of linen at all. I love how the laundresses backed each other and helped each other through illnesses and such. It is just wonderful. Wish women could back each other nowadays within industries like that.
I suspect living in much smaller towns enabled those women to see 👀 those other women day in and day out. That way, it was easy to know that if you didn't help a girl out when she was down, you couldn't likely expect help when you needed it. So they did.
Honestly, I'm surprised by how much you say they washed their wool. I used wool diaper covers with my boys and for pee, I would just air them out. I hand washed them every 3-4 weeks or if there was poop. ( they were lanolized to be water proof so maybe that helps with the smell.) We have other wool clothes and they very rarely get washed. The only exception is my husband's wool leggings which are machine washable.
Nice video. A statue should be erected for the inventor of the laundry machine I would say. By the way le pescheur aus lavendieres (in modern French it would be le pêcheur aux lavandières) litterally means something like the fisherman who fishes laundresses. Or laundresses fisher. (not te be confused with a pécheur, a sinner ;-) ). Interesting to see safety was already an issue in those days!
I’m sooooo sooooo glad that I have my own machines in my garage… Saturday’s my normal laundry day and most of the time my clean clothes aren’t even folded until the following Saturday (if I don’t filch the items straight out of the dryer to wear during the week)… I would not have clean clothes in medieval times. 🤣 Also co-signing that it takes a lot to make wool socks stink. I’ve switched to pretty much exclusively wearing my handknit wool socks year-round. They get washed once a month and aired out between uses and never smell. (Of course mind are made from washable wool, so less risk of felting if mishandled…)
There was also the terrible job of the "fuller", whos job it was to collect stale urine and wash clothes in it, typically done by stomping around barefoot in a barrel full of it, similar to how grapes are mashed for wine making.
Wool socks are AMAZING!!! Honestly, I'm in the process of converting my sock stash to wool. One thing to remember about modern wool socks is that it's very rare to find ones that are 100% wool because they don't last as long without at least some synthetic fiber, and if you are wearing them for any dirty activities like hiking, mountain biking, etc, you can just throw them in with your regular laundry. Some of my favorite brands are Darn Tough, Farm to Feet, and Minus 33 (these are my fave, but Darn Tough will replace any socks you buy from them, no questions asked, for life). My suggestion would be to look for wool socks that have at least 50% wool to really get the benefits, but I try to get higher percentages than that, usually between 60-70%.
I've got linen duvet & pillow covers (thanks Ikea)... lovely things. Also strongly recommend wool-filled duvets if you can get them (mine are Devon Duvets and Baavet, both UK wool and made). I get really cross with historical novels who have their heroines in silk chemises... surely even under evening dresses the point is something washable between the dress and skin!
There was like 5 minutes in the 1890s when silk combinations were popular, but they were knit silk intended to be handwashed, and it was supposed to reduce bulk under the corset. They did not appear to catch on past that 5 minutes.
Let me add my recommendation for wool filled duvets! My great grandmother made a wool duvet from her sheep in Quebec for my mother. I inherited the duvet and had it cleaned and added some new wool and a new cover. It is the most amazing warmth you can imagine. It is insulating and breathable so you don't sweat, but you stay warm. If you are crafty, get wool batting and cotton fabric and make your own. Or talk to Zehlingers in Michigan and they will make it for you.
Feather duvets/eiderdowns are also wonderfully warm and light. I had one as a kid - home made as Mum made friends with the local duck shooters and they gave her the feathers, plus she had feathers she saved from poultry she (or rather, Dad) killed. I have a wool stuffed pillow and I love it - or rather, the one I bought 30 years ago I love as it's solid but comfy but the one I bought recently to replace it feels more like polyester stuffing and it's not firm enough really. It also smells of wool which is odd as my old one didn't, even when it was new.
@@SnappyDragon yeah. This was in novels set in around 1810 to 1850. So no knit combies to be had. Also none of our heroines wear stays. Ever. (Until we get to the 1850s).
I have a wool filled duvet and it's so lovely. I like the weight of it when I'm sleeping and it's so cozy without making me sweat. Now I need to just save up money for linen sheets...
This was excellent entertainment while folding laundry. As a knitter, I was really surprised when you were confused about socks, then I remembered that not everyone has the list of "why wool socks are awesome" memorized. And, unfortunately, as a parent of a small child who has not entirely mastered the art of staying dry all night, laundry unfortunately does still involve pee.
Spring-cleaning my student dorms textiles ended up with me doing 12 loads of laundry... It was the pillow cases, the sofa cases, the kitchen towels and the blankets and mops. Although it took the entire afternoon and many back and forth trips at least I could leave it be while in the machines 😆 On top of those 12 loads I also did 4 loads of my stuff where one machine broke down and it's currently holding my comfy blanket and small panda teddy hostage, hopefully I can free them before the janitor gets back on Monday but I'm doubtful.
Wrt the woolen socks, do consider that their shoes, if leather, would be made from traditional vegetable-tanned leather and not modern chrome-tanned leather. Vegetable-tanned leather is full of tannins that inhibit the growth of the bacteria that cause foot odour - so it's quite plausible that their socks and feet simply did not stink the way they do with modern materials.
Actually one of my friends brother decided to make himself linen shirts as a gym wear because of how absorbent and eco friendly it is. Or more like tried as he cut two without seam allowance and then send the rest to his mother. He got a shirt in the end. But as a Finn I can bet you that most of the laundry would have been done in sauna. You take your lake water, heat your sauna and the water canister and bam hot water. With most lakes in the world we have no shortage of fresh water over here. But I don’t think that I am terribly of by assuming that my ancestors would have taken advantage of their all encompassing freezer of four months every year. Cold kills bacteria. If you are gonna have a clear night just leave your dirty cloths outside. This works on jeans btw.
I was so curious why you were looking for the laudress...great video! Love the intro, oh and during winter I do not want to live without my tumbledryer.
I lived off grid for a while and even with modern detergent, washing by hand was such a pain that it was much easier to drive the ten miles into town to do the laundry at the laundromat. We had clothes lines indoors and out though, and hung all our stuff to dry even in winter. The wood heat dried everything faster than the sunshine sometimes.
Okay, I was already sold on linnen, but now I need to increase my stock of wool socks. I wonder if I can find some thin ones... As you were talking about it I realized that all of that was true, and that the woolen socks don't pill like my modern winter socks do. I have several pairs of perfectly servicable warm socks that I don't wear because I'm too lazy to shave them, and I live in a country where we don't wear shoes inside, even at work most of the time, so socks need to look nice. I was also thinking about my time in a developing country where we hand washed. I kind of liked laundry day then. But I was only washing my things, not a family's worth. And we had running water and laundry soap designed for cold water wash. Since the area was prone to flooding most houses were built on stilts and we hung our laundry under the house. At first I thought that wasn't great because it was out of the sun, but it was actually fantastic. We never had to worry about it raining on our clothes when we weren't home to take it in, and the wind blew through and dried them pretty quickly.
Medieval sources do also talk a lot about the social component of doing laundry together! I image it was really nice for them to have an excuse to get together, even if it was hard work.
@@SnappyDragon Here in China you will still sometimes see kids steping on the clothes in a big plastic tub, like they were stomping on grapes, to wash them. Sometimes it is more dancing than stomping, having fun getting the chores done.
Washing clothes in rivers is still a norm in lots of parts of the world today! I only have my experience spending some time in an outer, rural village in Vanuatu, but I washed my laundry in the main river there and locals showed me how to do it properly, which was totally smacking the garments on the rocks (as opposed to scrubbing it against itself like I'd done at home for certain handwash items). Honestly, those clothes got so clean, and no holes showed up in my t-shirts, as happens when my washing machine snags them.
My grandmother is always telling me how she would hand wash nappies and hankercheifs in a pot on the stove, stirring them with a wooden spoon. She says she was one of the first people to buy a washing machine as soon as they became available lol.
I really love your channel. Sheets, the bane of my life. I have gone through so many sets of modern sheets as the fitted sheet wears out so quickly. In contrast, the sheets from my childhood bed are still in almost pristine condition and I slept on longer. I am going to order some of the sheets you have sponsoring this video. Maybe I can stop my cycle of having to buy new sheets every 2 years. Which set did you say you bought?
Aww, thank you! What I have is the Linen "Hardcore" bundle, which has the Core sheets set plus a duvet cover and extra pillowcases. They do have just the sheet sets, and even some extra colors in the Last Chance section. The link in the description is tracked (although not an affiliate link), so it helps me out if you use that one!
@@SnappyDragon Thanks! I will check that out. I have been thinking of linen sheets for quite awhile and knowing someone who has then makes the decision easier.
Jersey sheets wear out _so_ fast! Just switching to fitted sheets that are woven with elastic in the corners rather than knit with elastic all around the circumference can make quite a difference.
@@katybeaumont mine were twin sheets from 196something that has Noah's Ark on them and I had a Mary Poppins quilted blanket. I had those on my bed till I left for college. I got a double bed in my room when I became a teen, but still slept in the twin bed.
This was so cool! Thanks for all the info and resources. If I had to wash my clothes using medieval methods, I'd have a lot fewer clothes. And I'd learn to like wool socks. As far as modern inventions, ovens. I bake and I would hate the process of baking without my gas oven.
The White House (US) had a laundry room where laundry could be hung to dry. I think it was Dolly Madison who used it. There was a damage from the damp clothes and fires used to help dry them.
This was super interesting! As much as I love having a washing machine, I think we should all get to beat the heck out of our clothes once in a while, as a treat ^^ Also, have you seen Daisy Viktoria's video about snow washing wool? She goes in depth about the methods and the science of it, as well as trying it out herself. It's really neat!
I am sixty years old the past is not that far away -when I was a kid they were disappearing but people had a copper = a large metal bowl the size of a washing machine bowl - this sat over a fire in the back yard and was filled with water and clothes and then boiled - the clothes would be scrubbed with soap and the cold water as they went in or would be soaked = after they boiled housewife or eldest kids would stir with long handled poles - the scum would be strained off and the poles used to get the clothes out - we had a mechanical mangle you turned the handle otherwise you twisted the clothes' with your hands or with the pole - saw women who would dip their hands into boiling water grab out a steaming pair of jeans bare handed and then twist them dry - this was in tropics so bloody hot = last one i saw in home use was on a station or ranch which did not have electricity in 1979
I'm most thankful for modern medicine! To start with, I'm RH negative; my three children are RH positive. Due to an early miscarriage, none of them would have survived long after birth. If they had, we'd have lost my oldest to Chron's disease at age 14. The second to extreme congestion/colic/asthma in her first year. My son, might have stood a better chance since he has no chronic health issues. Anyway, it's been a long time since I yearned for "the good old days!"
As far as modern wool washing, keep in mind a lot of commercial wool now is "superwash" wool that has been chemically treated to prevent felting/shrinkage during heat and agitation. That allows for a lot of our nicer wool socks to make it through machine wash/dry cycles without turning into thick toddler socks.
I was going to say, I don't even use a box! I have a jar of soup base, and I'll only make broth the long way when someone is ill and needs matzoball soup/"Jewish penicillin".
In a pinch you can also wash 100% wool with regular shampoo. It's not quite as good as wool wash, but it does work and you probably already have it. I'm very pleased that eyeglasses and contact lenses have been invented because I am literally blind without them. With them I see just fine; without them the world disappears into a blur less than a handspan from the end of my nose. Would not like to try living in a time or place where vision aids were not available.
Hello dear viewers! Just wanted to let folks know that for Reasons, the Brooklinen code has been updated and is now "SNAPPYDRAGON20". You can still use the same link, bit.ly/SNAPPYDRAGON_Brooklinen . 🐉💚
I’ll there be a new code in 2022?
That background music is terrible and distracting. Please don't do that. You don't NEED background music, and it definitely shouldn't be louder than your vox channel and distracting stuff that would only appeal to a small demographic of your audience.
I believe the French "le pescheur aus lavendieres" translates more closely to "the fisher of laundresses." I *absolutely* admit I could be quite wrong; I haven't spoken more than a handful of words in French since high school 21 years ago, though I can still read it.
Either way, I don't think you're actually wrong; I just like to banter back and forth about matters linguistic.
I wish I could elaborate further, but growing up I was told to be grateful we didn’t do the traditional (Korean) laundry style where you UNSEW ALL SEAMS IN YOUR CLOTHES and then beat them in the river to get all the sickness demons out. Because they hide in the seams so it would be gross to wash still sewn clothing. Thus laundry day was capped off with resewing all your clothes back together. 😭
. . . AAAHHHHH no thank! o.o
Oh dear that sounds even worse than the japanese method of seam ripping the lining for a wash out of the more precious (painted and embroidered) kimono that can't be washed, argh. Never did that with mine though, underlayers for a win >
This probably started as a way to get rid of any lice lurking in the garment seams. I'd soon be known as the woman whose clothes are only tacked together!?
@@rosemarielee7775 Please keep in mind lice can only cling/crawl onto human hair not clothing. Body lice does exist, but is far less common to head lice and both are easily removed with fine toothed combs.
From my understanding, this unstitching refers specifically to the need to remove the water soluble paper pieces set at the collar and cuffs of the jeogori (jacket, top piece). These should be called dongjeong (collar paper piece) on the git (neckline), and kkeutdong (paper cuffs?) on the somae buri? (sleeve ends). I'm not too sure tho. The only total dismanteling of the jeogori that should occur, would be only in winter when the quilted stuffing was removed! Korean women did wear an undergarment over their chest wrappings under the jeogori, apperently, but Im not sure if it had sleeves? hence the need for specialised cuff and collar pieces!
I think what's really important about the whole "people in the past weren't stupid" mindset is to keep in mind that people find solutions to the problems that are important to them using the resources that are available to them. So we can say that even though "progress" is not strictly linear, for many problems that we still have to deal with today, having more resources makes our solutions better--but technology also changes the problems we face. Like nowadays the problem of "being machine launderable" is much more salient to clothing manufacture than the problem of "not having to be laundered as often."
This is a really cool way of looking at it! I love it.
@@SnappyDragon There's also the fun aspect that the myth of linear progress comes from Christian imperialism and that uncritical nostalgia is extremely closely tied with white supremacy. "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," might be the only healthy framework?
When my grandmother would have a bitch at my mother over how easy she had things with vacuum cleaners and automatic washing machines with a spin cycle, my mother would say it wasn't that simple, because a) gran never had to pick up Lego; and b) As the technology made laundry easier, standards of cleanliness rose so you had to do it every day rather than just on Monday.
I remember reading a passage out of a magazine or newspaper from the 1850s that said the same thing, but about clothes! "Now that we've got sewing machines to make stitching faster, of course we start designing dresses with so much more of it that they take the same amount of time to make."
@@lnorlnor The loony left are not exactly celebrated for paying close attention to personal hygiene, so I am not sure what this festering woke garbage is doing on a thread about washing clothes.
One of my favorite realisations of all times is that the fairytale about the miller’s daughter turning straw into gold was about making flax into linen.
Oh! I was today years old when you taught me that!
@@topazmine1086... I was also today years old
That makes much more sense. But did she ever figure out Rumples name? Lol I'm kidding. Still that is interesting information.
Also goldthread for embroidery.
That was made by taking either a linen or silk thread (called the soul) and wrapping an incredibly thin strip of gold foil (sometimes glued onto a parchment base to make it more durable) around that thread.
In medieval Cologne, where famous goldthreads were produced and exported to all of Europe, linen was used as the base. And because you needed small, delicate fingers to wrap the gold foil around that base thread, very young girls from the countryside were often hired for this job.
They were promised by the guild of embroiderywomen (a guild consisting *only* of women, i might add) that when they got older and too big to continue making goldthread they would then be trained in the craft of embroidery and be able to work in this very profitable business.
But for many of the young female workers, this promise turned out to be false.
...how did it take me *this long* to realize
My local village still has the outdoor area where the women would wash the clothes. It's like a square pond with wood around the edges to stand/kneel on, and a roof over it held up by four wooden posts. Of course it's not used these days.
That's so cool! Are there pictures anywhere online?
@@SnappyDragon I have never looked, to be honest. You could look though, the village is St. Augustin in Correze, France.
@@SnappyDragon These are quite common all over France (mostly south, I think because they were less destroyed during the wars therefore they still exist. They are called "lavoir" in french if you want to look it up
@@SarahlabyrinthLHC Correze!, my family has roots near Ussel.
@@endeeray4295 Awesome!
Not sure how old is this habit but something laundry-related very traditional in Brazil is coconut (oil) soap. I know for sure it has been used at least since the early 1900s though. It's interesting because coconut oil is seen as exotic and luxurious in Europe and the US and here it's so associated with laundry to the point that perfume companies sort of avoid coconut notes in fragrances due to these connotations LOL
I suppose the same applies to olive oil soap in the Mediterranean. Olive oil is expensive here and completely imported so it seems luxurious to me, but for a Spanish or Italian person it might have the same connotations as coconut soap has for us Brazilians.
My late grandmother also knew how to make ''ash soap'' using lye made from wood ash as described in the video and lard, but it needed to be very well balanced or otherwise it would be incredibly corrosive to the point of hurting your hands when you used it.
That's so interesting! It makes complete sense. In the Western world, there seems to be that same connection with lavender and laundry, although that does end up in other things too.
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing!
Interesting, and something I didn't know, but of course people would use whatever fat was most easily available to them in their region - here in Denmark it was traditionally pig fat that was used to make soap. Somewhat different in fragrance, I would have imagined...
"Smells like bacon... It must be laundry day!" (Joking, of course; rendered pork fat has very little if any smell, and presumably the more affluent people would have had their soap scented with whatever herbs were available.)
Coconut soap sound like a nice smell, though. I could definitely imagine associating that with clean laundry.
It you make cold or hot process soap today using oils/fats and sodium hydroxide, you still need to have everything be incredibly balanced, it’s the same kinds of ingredients! Most modern soap companies do their detergent making in buy industrial vats so we just don’t get to see it.
The saponification process is dependent on the strong base (lye) bonding with the oils or fats to create glycerin and fatty acids. Nowadays we have more exact ways of measuring and knowing exactly how much lye is in our lye solution, so you’re less likely to have an oil/fat heavy batch and get really oily, shitty soap, or have a lye-heavy batch that’s still caustic, but it’s more or less the same process.
Oh, that's fascinating - in the US, I just found a coconut based laundry soap and absolutely adore it - its funny that it is so old hat in Brazil!
One thing to note here... a lot of things that are cinsidered "linen" are made not from what we now consider linen but from a variety of plants. Nettle being a cheap one, especially for the poorer people (it spins beautifully, and was also called silk of the north/poor). Other plants were also used. Linen is made from what plants were available.
@Megan Von Ackermann it was propably used, and we now have dna (or something) research that tells us a lot of household items that were thought to be made from flax were nettle or hemp. Linen was a term for the type of item and not for the plant or fibre.
Thank you. I've watched a demonstration of the preparation of nettle fibres, here in Scotland, a lot of time and work but a good cloth eventually. With these old ways of producing things you can see how the division of labour made sense, though of course it led to many other problems of attitudes and beliefs that we have still not solved. This is a really good channel.
You can still buy something close to nettle cloth commercially in the form or Ramie as it's a member of the nettle family common in parts of Asia.
Hemp was another common choice, and the fibres that were slightly too coarse for weaving and sewing would be used to make ropes.
@@ragnkja that does depend on the preparation of the fibre. If i buy hemp fibre at the hardwear store i would not be able to spin a fine yarn from that. But there are people who can prepare hemp fibre so it can be quite soft. Those can be prepared by the spinner or as i do it, i buy the commercially processed stuff.
When my grandparents moved from their old to their new farm in rural Africa, there was only a single pipeline, meant for potable water only. So one sunny morning, we packed up every single piece of laundry around the farm, foods, drinks and the majority of the family and traipsed about half an hour into the rain forest to the nearest creek. Along with the two biggest cauldrons, soda and laundry detergent. We made a fire, boiled water and tossed in the soda/soap, dunked in first the bedsheets, then by and by the rest, as the soak grew cooler and less potent, since we continually replenished it with fresh water. The men would soak, the women pad and scrub and we kids would wring them out and spread them on the rocks and bushes for drying. By the time the pots et all were cleaned, most of the heavier pieces were dry and ready for transport.
Ever since doing laundry by hand hasn't fazed me anymore...^^
Experiences like that will absolutely change perspective! I wish more people thought about that before romanticizing the past. Real people still use these methods, and they are WORK.
We went through a household stomach bug without a washing machine once when my kids were little. I washed so many items with a washboard that weekend. It has been years and I will still never underestimate how much pain and exhaustion laundry causes.
I mean...it's bad enough even with a washing machine. When your toddler wakes up screaming covered in diarrhea....it's not fun
a bit of not-so-historical trivia: some medieval laundry practices survived at least until after WWII. I have vivid memories of seeing the linens from a “great wash” spread out on a stubble field to dry, with someone periodically sprinkling them with water to amp up the bleaching.
And washing by hand in streams survived until at least the late 1960s in remote areas (or as “remote” as any area can be in western Europe). One would occasionally see fluffy clumps of bubbles floating down a stream, giving off the distinctive smell of OMO, a then-popular laundry detergent. Washing machines are recent, and pretty much universal access to washing machines (at least in wealthy countries) is even more recent.
Beating the laundry was still done in early 20th century here in Northern Europe, and even today every city in Finland has a communal place by a lake, the sea or a river for washing carpets. (Nowadays they even handle the sewage there, so the water wont get polluted.) It's just a traditional thing to do in the summertime, if you don't want to pay for having your carpets washed.
And don’t forget line drying in sunshine is still recommended for bleaching
My mom, born in the SE MO Ozarks in 1911, regularly hung sheets and cotton quilts (underside up) out in the hot Kansas summer sun - as well as anything white with yellow age stains. This was a once a summer thing for her. I was tasked with keeping the stuff damp - not dripping wet) using the garden hose. She used the same method to bleach out bad underarm stains. You drape the garment on the line so that the underarm area is turned upward to catch all those sunbeams. I've done the same with cotton and linen blouses I've used as a dancer for folk dance parties or performances. Sometimes she would also add a bit of vinegar or lemon juice as a pretreatment. The sun treatment works very well. It also does a disgustingly good jab at fading colors - so hang colored clothing inside out!
Mom also grew up pumping water from a well, and stirring and boiling laundry in a big cauldron in the back yard, as well as other special treatments. She could wring fabric so dry you would think it had been through an extra wild spin cycle. She wasn't happy until I could wring things that dry, too. We had a washer, and indoor plumbing, so I skipped the other stuff. She also didn't teach me special treatments for special fabrics or stains - she went with modern, easier solutions. Although she sometimes felt some of the old ways worked a bit better.
@@sarahk5681 Omg yes, my bio-parents were part Roma (Gypsy) and my mom knew so many amazing traditional tips I wish I'd written down! Like -- when using lemon juice to treat whites, so they bleach in the sun, she'd always warn us not to splash any on our skin, because lemon juice has the reverse effect on skin -- it makes it more susceptible to tanning wherever it splashed.
So if, for instance, you had splashes of lemon juice on your arms, you would end up with this weirdly-patchy tan by the end of the day. And if you were Irish (like a friend of mine who didn't tan easily) then the places where the lemon juice had been would get badly sunburned much, much faster than the rest of her exposed skin. Something about the lemon juice makes UV rays more easily absorbed, in clothing or skin.
Very interesting. One laundry anecdote that you may be interested in (although it may be a British thing only) is that the reason our biggest meal of the week is our Sunday roast is that Monday was traditionally wash day and so the cold left overs from Sunday were eaten on Monday when the woman of the house wouldn't have the time to cook. Also reading a book - The Golden Thread by Kassia St Clair - which is fascinating....but I love the added info from your video about St Claire! What a lovely coincidence.
Anna gave me that book for the holidays! I'm extra excited to read it now.
@@SnappyDragon my copy is from my local library but I'm half way through and already feel I'll need to have my own copy to re read and refer too. There's so much interesting information for the sewer 😍📚
I'd suggest the connection would be more likely to be the other way around, given the big influence Christianity has had on western Europe, the roast is on Sunday because it's the day when everyone is guaranteed a day off work (except the housewife because most Christian groups aren't really strict about Sunday being a day of rest so long as you aren't doing paid work) the day after you've made a big meal to celebrate Sunday you have enough leftovers that you can take a day off cooking to do laundry.
My Dad says my grandma apparently used to still hand wash and use a mangle in a small rural village in Leicestershire in the 50s. My grandma also mentioned Monday was always wash day because you’d have Sunday roast leftovers.
The Nordics actually named a day laundry/wash day! We have the standard sun and moon day (Sunday/søndag, Monday/mandag) then the four primary Nordic gods: Tyr, Odin, Thor and Frej (Tuesday/tirsdag, Wednesday/onsdag (You English use Odin's Germanic name "Wotan") Thursday/torsdag and Friday/fredag) and then lørdag (from the old Nordic word for washing/laundry that was adopted by the English)
When my great-grandfather Gino got back home from an American prisoner of war camp (we are Italian) he saw how his wife and daughter did laundry the manual way, he got a big shock and bought a laundry machine immediately. Why? Because he as a PRISONER OF WAR had had a machine to do his laundry in the USA. And he could afford one...
Interestingly enough, woolen diaper covers are a staple in the more dedicated parts of the cloth diaper community. They are knitted from heavyweight unbleached raw wool, and usually have longish ribbed cuffs on the legs, They are very absorbent, and the lanolin in the wool reacts with the urine creating a form of soap. A cloth diaper - cotton today, but certainly linen in previous centuries - is worn underneath, mostly as a liner to catch any poops. As long as no feces or other dirt gets on the wool, the covers are not laundered, but when they are washed, they need to be lanolized, or conditioned with lanolin, before using again. Modern sensibilities dictate that cloth diapering parents do launder and re-treat the diaper covers every couple weeks, but rotating and airing them out between uses was probably much more common in the days before individual households had laundry facilities, and before the days of “rubber pants.” It probably helps that all babies wore long, loose-fitting dresses, essentially tiny chemises, until they were several years old.
Surprisingly, they aren’t particularly stinky, which is saying a lot for diapers.
Me and my older sister wore such things as we were little. The were washed if need be, by hand, in lukewarm water. But usually, the cotton (muslin cloth) diaper would catch the wet and the solid refuse, unless there was a "mishapp". My youngest sister grew up with pampers diapers. Less work for my mum, but much more expensive, and more skin problems for my sister. At least thats what my mum told me retrospectively.
Wow. I still can't see how people safely used wool like that. My skin and eyes gets severely irritated (rashes and pink eye) from the wool blanket and clothing I used.
@@Velvetx4cove sounds like you might have a wool allergy
Love this! Back in the olde days when I was earning a medical/history degree, we were discussing disease and life expectancy. When most outer clothing was wool or silk and therefore not washable, people spot cleaned and aired their garments. Your chemise that was next to your skin was linen and washable. But do you know when life expectancy went up? When cotton cloth became affordable for the average person and could be changed and washed daily. So, being a bit of a smart-ass while writing a paper, I hypothesised that what our mothers told us about wearing clean underwear every day extended the lives of our foremothers.
Understanding how exactly diseases spread made a huge difference. Sure, dairy maids were meticulous about hygiene in the dairy, including their own hands, but until most people understood the importance of hygienic practices such as washing your hands after using the privies, faecal-oral pathogen spread was a lot more common.
Honestly, that is probably something that’s been passed on from medieval times.
@@kitdubhran2968
Those who could afford it definitely changed their underwear at least once a day.
Did the increased availability of cotton underwear coincide with improved water sanitation and sewerage ? I just wonder whether increased life expectancy was due more to those factors? Interesting proposition, thanks.
I like that theory 😂. Obviously we know that the price of a lot of things (including many types of basic food once non perishable foods like wheat could be shipped to Europe from North America along with the cotton) went down meaning better nutrition, plus improvements in urban sanitation cut infections like cholera.
“You don’t have to understand _how_ something works in order to understand that it _does_ work.”
Modern medicine is still built on this principle. Yes, it’s nice and often useful to understand how a treatment works, but in order to help people as much as possible, this isn’t required for a treatment to become available. As long as it’s confirmed to be safe (and of course, new treatments, medications and vaccines are watched carefully after approval as well, just in case some rarer harmful side effect was missed during the trial stages) and more effective than a placebo, that’s “all” it takes.
I wish more people understood *this!*
Such a great point! 👍🏽
I've worked as a MRVS ("mervs", medical research volunteer subject) -- women can sometimes get paid extra well, because so many trials were previously only on men -- and there are so many times when something works and no one understands why.
This is also why double blind studies are so important, and why I wish people would read the story of "Clever Hans" before perusing VAERS!
Humans are pattern-seeking mammals, who tend to attribute coincidence to cause, and that's a huge problem with VAERS. And especially since the pandemic started, it's become even more complicated.
@@zxyatiywariii8
Clever Hans was definitely a clever horse, but his bent was towards communication and reading body language, not mathematics.
It's sad that wool and linen are seen as ''luxury fabrics'' nowadays when they would make such good everyday clothes. If you can't sew the cost of ready to wear clothes with these fabrics (at least in my country) are prohibitive, while you can wear 100% cotton or viscose on a budget. I don't know much about the production processes of wool and linen nowadays but I can't imagine it would be as costly as silk for example (which has always been luxurious and expensive). I also read stories about sheep farms throwing away wool because there wasn't demand for it.
It's super frustrating! I'm seeing a little bit of a shift towards more wool and linen, but it's still at price points that are an investment.
One of my favorite fleeces to spin was acquired when I had a very limited budget but somehow decided I needed to learn to prepare a fleece anyway. The cheapest fleece I could find came from a seller who sells wool from her neighbor, who generally just burn the wool from their sheep other than the few fleeces that are sold by the lady. Now, it's not the finest wool nor the easiest to prepare, but it still makes me sad to know that there is wool going to waste in such a way when wool garments are so much more expensive.
Unfortunately wool is being sold for pennies or literally thrown away/burned by farmers in the UK because production way outweighs demand.
Linen can be made with either flax or hemp. Flax grows in cold climates, but hemp doesn't. The problem is that hemp was seen as competition to cotton production, therefore it was demonized. I think we need to bring hemp back. Growing cotton is very bad for the environment (and people).
While price and budget definitely matter, I think people should see clothes as an investment, more than they typically do now. In some countries like the US, fast fashion has encouraged people to see clothes as disposable (cheap fabrics not made to last and at dirt cheap prices). Many people will buy something they only wear a couple times, or will think they should replace their clothes after a short time even though their old clothes are still fine. You can't treat wools, linens, and silks this way, unless you want to waste a ton of money. Clothes made of these fabrics need to be bought thoughtfully with the intent to wear them for a long time, not as a trendy piece you'll never wear again after a couple months.
You don't have to go back to the middle ages to appreciate your laundry machine. I remember back in the 50s living in a village in the Netherlands, my mother doing laundry. Pots of diapers boiling on the stove. She had a mangle I was not allowed to touch for fear of getting crushed fingers. All of the laundry was dried outside, the diapers covered the little lawn we had. My mother didn't get a washing machine until the 60s. She and my aunts were very happy to toss out all the linen sheets, shirts and such for easy to launder poly cotton. They didn't need ironing, you do know that linen sheets should be ironed? The modern linen look of wrinkles is not period for any part of history. It needs to be wrinkle free and starched crisp to keep the wrinkles away. You forgot that whole day of ironing and starching. That was my job as a young teen.
That sounds so tiring :( Modern washing machines are one thing I'm very thankful for. I hope you're relaxing now, ma'am!
@@emmabennett7699 yes we have the latest front loader and matching dryer stacked. Knitwear also doesn't need ironing. I actually don't mind ironing that much but not pants .... I hate pressing pants.
Having starched and ironed my petticoats . . . I'm just embracing the wrinkles, modern as they may be 😅
@@SnappyDragon yes I have too. Modern is wrinkled to show it is natural! My mother's friend from norway gave me all her old linen sheets she had gotten for her wedding, lovely soft fabric with white on white embroidery at the tops. She also adored poly cotton large sheets for king sized beds, these sheets were narrow and made for single, not twin, sized small beds. They made the little beds and pushed them together to make the marriage bed.
True in the 1950's America too!
The fact that laundress of the medieval ages was essentially bat wield alchemy using badass who freaked out the patriarchy makes me so happy. I am equally happy that I don't have to deal with the fun that is my period in the said time. Give me modern times for that 100%
Oh *absolutely*. I am *here* for modern medical advances in that field.
Oh same!
Don’t forget the muscles!!! I worked with a woman who did laundry by hand for a small hotel on the west coast of Africa- her muscles were huge!!!
@@bw3839 Yeah, I was about to mention something about how absolutely yoked those women must've been.
Thank you so much for this much needed giggle/romp through history as I struggle to fold my laundry while coughing my lungs out (the plague that ravages this land finally caught me).
Oh nooo! I hope you recover well and quickly and that someone invents a machine that will fold your laundry for you 💚
Get well soon 💚💙❤️
I hope you feel better soon!
Feel better ♥
I hope you feel better soon!
My washer actually broke the day you published this (frozen pipes in a rental place). So we had to hand ring out literally all the towels in the house (most had been being washed, the rest had to dry up the water that went everywhere). It was such not only a forearm workout but also required so much grip strength! Those laundresses must have been so buff! After ringing out most of the water we brought it to my mom's to be washed. The wet clothes were so heavy I couldn't lift the basket my husband had to. We'll still be several days without a washer while they fix it so I definitely appreciate modern laundry methods more now.
Oh nooooo. The last thing I would want is to be dealing with wet laundry when it's cold enough to freeze the pipes! I hope it gets fixed soon.
*wring
~16:04 Tangential, but a fun fact regarding historical European gender roles I learned recently was that early male colonists in Virginia were often reluctant to grow maize, because even though within their own European gender roles farming was a perfectly masculine activity, within Powhatan society it was something only women did, and they thus adopted the view that it was "women's work" despite the contradiction with British norms.
#WhyAreMen
*Rolls eyes in colonial women.
My grandma was not Powhatan, but Pueblo and she said that the maize is like the archetypal essence of femininity. In traditional cultures there's often a spiritual significance behind the division of labor. But it's less practical in modern times. As an enby I'm uncomfortable with gender roles.
I'm grateful for modern refrigeration, healthcare, family planning, and yes, laundry.
Also, I now understand why the laundresses at the Renaissance Faire were some of the bawdiest ladies there (and therefore some of my favorites).
Me too!
Our local Festival "washing well wenches" are awesome and hilarious!
Family planning in the era had one simple trick to it. Not having sex.
Wool sock devotee here, and I swear by Darn Tough. They're super durable (this winter, I finally wore holes in several pairs I'd been wearing regularly since... 2017, probably?) and come in lots of different weights appropriate for different uses and weather. I wash them on the gentle cycle and hang dry them and have had no issues with shrinking/felting, etc. Pricier than cotton socks, but well worth it, and much less smelly!
I lived in Mongsolia for a year, and while I had friends who had washing machines (the kind you have to fill from and then empty into the sink), I did not. So while I schlepped my sheets, towels, and sweatshirts over to those friends' houses, I found myself doing small amounts of laundry a couple times a week in a tumpin (a large, shallow bucket) with soap, water, and a washboard. I very quickly found myself developing habits that I now know mimicked historical ones: wearing camis under everything to absorb sweat, lots of wool, changing into something easily laundered as soon as I got home, hanging up the nice work clothes to air out, and wearing them several to many times between launderings.
Between the constant chore of laundry and the struggle to clean dust, dirt, and hair out of a wool carpet with a straw broom, I returned with a PROFOUND appreciation for washing machines and vacuum cleaners!
I actually knit a lot with wool. There's a process now for something called superwash wool, where you can throw the wool item in the wash without it getting felted (thus the super wash). Also wool socks, knitted ones at least, are amazing. Something really cool to look into for medieval fashion would be waterproofing, because they did a process called lanolizing, where basically after they harvested the lanolin from sheep, they'd then put lanolin in wool items to make them waterproof. Great for surviving a rainy day.
Another fun fact about wool, it can hold more than it's own weight of water, so women falling into a river was absolutely dangerous, as their clothes were most likely to weigh them down and drown them.
Another fun fact, the only permanent dye prior to our modern day ones way Tyrian/Phoenician Purple, made from mollusks. Scientists today are still trying to understand how a non synthetic dye has such lasting power.
Unfortunately many methods to make wool superwash include coating it in synthetic polymers ;_;. Meaning your are still wearing plastic around, shedding microplastic and you can't composte your socks if they die- also the process before the coating needs a lot of toxic chemicals. This does not show at all on the packaging, and even the branded wools sell it as an advantage. It totally sucks. I made a few pairs using superwash and wash them in my micro plastic collecting wash bag, at least a bit can be caught by that.
But the waterproofing in lanolin works good, you just mix a spoonfull in a bucket with some dishsoap and dunk your wools in, it even reduces the scratchyness of brand new harris tweed. The water sits on top of the fabric instead of soaking in. Oh and it holds up a few washes with detergent before you have to repeat it (no change after cold water rinses, though). I got mine at the pharmacy.
@@mirabellegoldapfel6256 That's sad about superwash. . . But good to know.
I don't use wool much (scratchy!) but I do spin dog fur, and some breeds have thick double coats that yield amazing yarn. It's as warm as wool, but doesn't have the scratchiness that drives me crazy.
A friend of mine works at a grooming salon and she keeps the fur that the double-coated dogs "blow" every spring, because we only have two dogs, and one is 4 pounds lol. Washed and carded and spun into yarn, it doesn't have any of the "doggy" scent, and it's a beautiful and natural fiber.
Almost anything one can do with wool, one can do with dog fur, and the natural colors are also so gorgeous! We made a winter coat for our tiny dog, from fur from our big dog, and she loves it! And they look adorable when they're out together.
@@zxyatiywariii8 Aww so the big dogs fur now warms the wee one, thats cute! I don't have dogs, but thats really nice recycling. The furthest I do is compost my combed out own hair, lol.
There is a shepherd with a herd of (probably scratchy wool) sheep on an ex army area in my town since a few years, maybe I'll try this year to get a fleece and learn carding and spinning (got a hand spindle at the christmas market). I think if I wash the wool very gently a lot of lanolin will stay and reduce the itchiness. I can always pick up the little twigs and leaves by hand. A the very least, one can always line the garments or wear a linen thing underneath, like in ye olde times.
If it smells too sheepy, one can always try the... rustic method. I do middle age live role play games, campfire and everything and smoke covers everything. So does good incense, like sandalwood, too.
@@zxyatiywariii8 Seriously? Using dog fur sounds amazing! Especially, for other animals with less fur when it gets cold. I mean, why not?
French here, you translated the "pêcheur aux lavandières" bit correctly, it does mean "fisherman of washerwomen" , sounding like it's their speciality as if it was a particular type of fish xD It was amazing to learn all this history, especially the technical parts about soap and chemicals they used :D
For the drying, i know that in my region of France (Dauphiné, near Lyon ) the temperatures are pretty low and it rains a lot, so the place where people would do laundry (the "lavoir" , a place with big pools, usually two : one for soaping and one for rincing ) would be covered with a roof - so after wringing the sheets out, they could hang them to dry protected from the rain! They are also a lot of covered marketplaces , so if the whole village did their laudry on the same day, they could still possibly all hang their clothes to dry x). Maybe those lavoirs were build a bit later than medieval times tho, i havent checked :)
Also, even this comment is getting way too big : the part about washerwomen being violent reminded me of a spooky Briton folktale about "les lavandières de la nuit" - the night's washerwomen. Basically, if you go out in the Briton countryside late at night, and go by a river you might meet strange figures dressed in white doing laundry. If you don't run away fast, one of the washerwoman will ask you (not very politely) to help her wring out a huge sheet ....and then as you start wringing she'll twist the sheet so hard it will tore away both your arms at once! Then the ghost washerwomen will disappear, leaving you for dead D: I feel like that tale was inspired by real life events x)
thanks again for the great video!!
This is *so* fascinating! I love getting long comments full of interesting stories.
Wow, cool story!
I love scary fairytales, merci for this, quelle horreur!
I can for good reason only talk for my own country, Denmark, here the practice of sleeping without your clothes was a big part of cleanliness too - and for longer than in many places around us. This was common practice in the farming communities (I don't know about how widespread it was otherwise). Not so much in relation to laundry but it meant that most of the pests (lice, ticks etc.) would die over night as the clothes would hang in the cold air. It meant that Jutland (the only part of Denmark that's landfast to the rest of the continent) went relatively free of some of the deceases until hired soldiers starting coming in in larger amounts in the 17th-18th century. The practice was still there when my grandfather was a small child, granted he grew up as one of the poorest in a poor rural part of the country.
That's so fascinating! I've been hearing so much about how people in colder climates made use of the naturally-occurring outdoor freezer they had, and I love it. I grew up in New England, also with cold weather, and if we ran out of room in the fridge or freezer during winter, we'd just put things outside in the snow, sealed up so the squirrels couldn't get them.
@@SnappyDragon My highschool chemistry teacher also did that!
@@SnappyDragon Yup! Snow is perfect for laundering! (There's a reason it's advisable today to freeze your jeans and woolen clothes if you really want them to last - unless there are stains then you of course wash)
We don't get much snow in Denmark anymore though. But it's still cold enough in winter to be refrigerator-cold. I have drinks and such on my balcony as we speak as it's close to 5c/41f in winter. No need to spend electricity on that at least.
We also defrost our freezers when it's 0 or below. you just pop the frozen goods outside (in shade) and it'll be fine and not de-thawed when you are done.
There's a memoir by a Polish petty nobleman and soldier from the 17th century. He travelled a lot with the army and they did get to somewhere near Denmark where he got to stay with a local family and made a note of them sleeping naked and undressing with the candle on, in front of everybody, even guests. He wrote that Polish soldiers teased the locals about it saying that in Poland a woman wouldn't undress herself like that even in front of her husband - so definitely not at a thing at least in our (ie. Polish) neck of the wood. They gave him basically the same answer you give here too - it gives the clothes a chance to air and they don't bring in any bugs to the bed. He also notices the wardrobe-style beds where you can climb in and shut the door from the room. And says that Danish women were attractive and prone to fall in love quickly, but the clogs that everyone wore made a hell of a noise, haha! ;-)
I love wool socks, especially in winter. No idea what the brand available at Costco is, but they are wonderful. And as for knitted socks, a little fulling from the laundry doesn't hurt, it just makes them a bit sturdier
I have a friend who literally yesterday asked if she could bring me anything from Costco 😃
My roommate washed a pair of woolen socks in the laundry and they shrank. She did not dry them obviously.
But those were hand-knitted. So probably stretching them out first would have helped that.
@@kitdubhran2968 you can get blocking frames for socks so they get their shape back as they dry. They’re either solid pieces or a wire outline in the shape of a sock, and they (obviously) come in pairs.
@@ReneePowell I’ve got tiny feet and massive calves/ankles.
So I’ll probably put mine on and spray them wet and let them dry on me. (When it’s warmer)
We’re still working on stretching the socks out until they’re useable again. But that’s a lesson she’s learned for next time. 😭
I learned about wool socks in Army basic training as our socks were 100% wool and amazingly comfortable even on long marches in a hot climate. They never got stinky and didn’t hold water like cotton. Which kept your feet from blistering.
I wear them now in the wintertime because I like to wear Birkenstocks year round and even in the US south that gets chilly. Never had an odor problem though these are not usually 100% wool.
Textile enthusiast (dye, spin, weave, felt and knit) here to say... wool doesn't mind heat, I dye wool all the time in simmering temperature water. It's agitation and rapid temperature changes cause felting and therefore shrinkage in wool garments. Don't agitate and allow your wet woollens to cool slowly and you'll be right, swish them around and/or dunk them into cold water and you will get felting.
Wool only felts when the scales on the hairs hook into each other, and while hot water (and especially hot, soapy water) makes the scales stick out more, making them more “grabby”, it won’t cause the wool to felt unless the fibres rub against each other so that the scales have something to hook into.
This is going to sound weird, but a friend of mine has lots of wool and she loves it (I don't wear much wool myself so I can't say): As you mentioned, the scales on each strand of wool need to grab onto each other in order to felt, so after she soaks her woolen things -- with NO agitation -- she uses a product called "After U Bathe" (made for dogs) which flattens down and "closes" the scales on each hair. (It's fun to compare the hairs under magnification and see the change between the "open", grabby scales and the flatter, "closed" scales.)
It's from Chris Christensen and Amazon carries it.
there is a reason why the first electric appliance both sets of grandparents bought once they could afford them were washing machines. before that doing laundry was a whole day of bone breaking hard labour.
My grandparents had hand operated wash tubs with wringer rollers above the tub do the water would run back into the tub. When they finally got electricity, there was a motor they could fit onto the washer to do the agitating and turning the rollers.
Yeah its true they used "Amonia" from urine to wash their clothes in the beginning. But when their knights came back from the crusades, they brought back two very valuable things a: Roses (and perfume oils and the recipe how to produce them) and b: SOAP! Because the people in the Middle East were not only much more forward in medicine, art and science, they also already knew how to produce soap! The recipe was brought back to Marseille (France) and from there the production of the world famous "Savon de Marseille" started. Through merchants and ships large parts of europe were delivered with soap and the town of Marseille got rich and famous with their soap production. There were only two kinds of Soaps available for centuries: the mild, green one, (containing 70 % olive oil) is mild enough to eaven wash a new born baby and it was meant to wash hands, face, hair and body and the white one was used to wash clothes, the floor, and eaven the dishes (this white soap is today known as core-soap and still used in some hoseholds!) These soaps were so popular, that King Louis IV released a law to legally protect the original medieval recipe and production of the original Savon de Marseille from copycats. This tradtional soap was used for many centuries until industrialisation came up with soap production and adding artificial fragrance and fancy colours into soaps. But before, there was litterally no other soap available. My grandmother still used it for washing and cleaning and really its super good, very effective, super gentle and much better than most "modern soaps", you just have to get used to the strong Olive smell of the green one. If you would like to try "original medieval soap" you can still buy the original arabic "Aleppo-Soap" or the original "Savon de Marseille", produced in france since the medieval times in unchanged recipe.. oh, and: its vegan too...
Soap was known in Europe as well, the Gauls had it for example, but it wasn't popular until the Crusaders came back.
I started my own sauerkraut ferment this week and was struck by how therapeutic breaking down the cabbage was. Perhaps laundry served a dual function. 😂
In Scandinavia to this day, beginning from the iron age, the day that is called Saturday is still called Wash day in their different languages, though all having the same root, while the other days were all named after various gods of their pantheon. And yes, even Sunday and Monday have their names rooted in Sunna/Sol, the Sun Goddess and Mani, the Moon God, we forget that these days. Iron age to medieval Scandinavians, unlike the rest of the known Europeans lived a very clean life with at least one major wash, like having a bath, a week, unlike some of their neighbours annual wash, which even filtered into the bathing habits of the settlers in what was to become the USofA.
Bleaching sheets in sunlight was very important, spreading sheets on grassy meadows wasn't just done to make the sheets dry faster, but also because sunlight was seen to have a detrimental effect on any remains of bugs or their eggs having survived the process of laundering. Lice and fleas and other similar nasties were a common and daily contact which good laundering could help minimise.
I too am in the process of replacing my cotton/polycotton sheets with linen, but I live in Europe, so sadly I cannot take up your offer. Instead I buy my linen fabric from a local fabric shop and finish them myself with handsewing. And yes, they are a dream to sleep in, and they get marvelously softer over time without loosing noticeable substance.
Thank you for your fun and informative video, I enjoyed it greatly.
Things I appreciate not having to do the old fashioned way: EVERYTHING! Cooking on an electric stove, cleaning with a vacuum cleaner and universal soap, showering in a bathroom, sleeping in a bug-less bed with box springs, driving in a horseless car, calculating with a device, reading by electric light, sowing, buying my clothes and yarn, buying my clothes....
Basically I really appreciate being a millennial!
This might be the first time I've heard anyone say they're glad specifically to be a millennial . . . but when you put it like that, so am I!
@@SnappyDragon my childhood was way better than my parents' and immensely better than my grandparents'
My my maternal grandmother starved as a child and my maternal grandfather was sent from home to work at a farm at 9-10 years old! My paternal grandparents were much better off, but still nowhere near the luxuries we surround ourselves with!
Alas those luxuries will be our downfall, they are too hard to give up, even if it would be better for the climate 😞
@@annejeppesen160 Poverty and hunger exist today as well. If you look at Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, many countries in Africa or LatinAmerica, or India you can see all the starving children. During the pandemic, even in Britan and the US many poor families were food insecure. So many children starve in spite of our wealth. It was , and still is, more a problem of distribution of resources, and the consequences of war, than of technology.
Its what people sometimes fail to understand. Having an stay at home mom was an necessity: cooking, cleaning, washing, reshaping the straw bed and taking care of any kids was an full time thing. For cooking you had to light and tend the fire, to clean and wash you either would go to an river, if you wanted an hot bath you had to heat the water in the fire and mixed with cold water in the bathtub(bathing one's husband was an intimate moment very common on medieval books on love) and etc.
Can you fit an 9-5 in this? Now, it took less since homes were multi-branch and multi-generational so this became kinda became an group job in the peasants casa and noble women had their servants.
I 100% agree with the last comment. How its it that we have a washer and dryer but still dont have a machine that folds the laundry for us. This is the 21st century! I want my laundry to fold itself for a change! All joking aside when my husband and it were first married our elderly neighbor who grew up during the Great Depression talked about how once a week they would gather up all the laundry in the house and haul it down to the creek with all the other women in town and how it was an all day affair. It was actually something they looked forward too. It was also the day they washed their hair. They would wash their hair first then start hauling buckets of water to the tub where they would scrub the clothes. The clothes were then put through a wringer and hauled to the creek to be rinsed. Then they could hang them up on the clothes lines. She told me that while the work was back breaking it was also a good excuse to hang out with your friends. When she got married and had her first washing machine, she said she felt like she was missing out on something. Me personally i'm not sure I could do it. My husband works union which means blue collar worker. Let me tell you just exactly how band his clothes, especially his pants and socks, can smell it the end of the day of he has been stuck outside working on something in the brutal Arizona sun in the middle of summer. I can imagine having to have that sitting around for a week waiting for was day. In to of that i have 5 kids, 2 of which are teenagers. In case you didn't know, they stink! Deodorant is a life savior otherwise you can smell them from a mile away. I am very grateful for having a washer and dryer. Especially since my washer started leaking just in time for lock down. It was nearly two months before we could get someone to come out and fix the part. It was small at first but after a month I was doing laundry in the bath tub with dawn dish soap. I couldn't even got into town to a self serve laundromat. Not fun, especially with my husband's smelly work clothes. 0 out of 10 it do not recommend doing laundry in the bathtub. Not fun.
Laundry robots coming soon...lol.
VEGETABLE LAMB! I’m so glad you included that little reference. As a person whose grandparents actually owned a cotton gin, I can honestly understand how medieval Europeans thought it was basically sheep plants.
I first saw this image in a high school world history class and have been *waiting* to use it ever since. I'm only disappointed I couldn't find a reason to run on about its place in Jewish mythology!
It’s literally called “tree-wool” (“Baumwolle”) in German.
I've always wanted a modern re-imagining of that illustration, preferably in a cute/cartoony art style. T-shirt, tote bag, mug... beginner spinning kit with a tahkli spindle and a few punis of natural colored cotton... it's just such an adorable visual.
@@SnappyDragon Video idea: "Vegetable lamb in Jewish mythology". I had no idea.
Both wool and linen (to a lesser extent) have antibacterial properties. This is why they hold up better against all types of body odor which is caused by the bacteria living naturally on our skin. Also wool performs well even when wet (think sweat or rain). When I discovered this about wool , I never went back to cotton socks though I still own a few pairs that coordinate with specific outfits. Another great thing about wool is that it can be used to prevent chafing. You can take a bit of loose wool and place it over any irritated spot on your foot then put your regular footwear on and feel the relief. Most wool socks available for sale today are knitted and can be washed (and sometimes dried) in laundry machines. A few clothing manufacturers have knit linen items available (think t-shirts and knickers) which are also well worth the investment for a comfortable stink-free modern wardrobe. Thanks for the video!
Ooh. That's probably why my wool socks are still alive then! I've been washing them with everything else and they're still alive, and I wash clothes way more often than most people since I'm a germophobe
Would love to know where those knitted linen items are available!
@@nancylindsay4255 I found some t-shirts that are knit linen at Gap sometime last year which is the most recent. Other than that, I found a knit linen skirt about 15 years back from one of those stores that gets the stuff that didn't sell from other stores. I have not purchased them, but I have seen knit linen knickers for sale at various online stores. Good luck!
Wool is so itchy though
@@acash93
Legs and especially feet can usually tolerate wool better than the rest of the body. I can wear wool tights, but need a barrier garment under my wool jumpers or else my skin turns bright red and itchy.
When our family moved to Spain in 1971 our clothes were hand washed by the maid. She brought up water in a bucket from the well then washed the clothes on the cement washboard made into the cement well. As a child I was fascinated by this.
I love that you have real captions. As a Deaf person they make a huge difference compared to the autocraptions. It's a little hard to read the things up on the screen as well as the captions (not just in this video, in your other videos too) but it's still worlds above what most people do, which is...nothing. They don't even set up their videos to allow the autocraptions to happen. So I appreciate your effort in captioning immensely.
Thank you so much! I don't understand why anyone *wouldn't* have real captions, when your entire video is scripted it takes two seconds to upload them.
@@SnappyDragon It's more work to do the transcription is all I can think.
It feels very apropos that I'm watching this video while doing my ironing 😂 very grateful for my electric iron that does NOT require being heated up on the stove/by the fire and to literally be pressed down on the fabric.
I’m watching while procrastinating doing laundry 🧺 😂
I've used stove-heated irons, not for clothes, but for hair while getting my hairdressing license. They are *terrifying.* If that was what I had, I would have burn marks everywhere including on my hands.
@@SnappyDragon that sounds HORRIFYING. I've burned myself with curling irons before and frankly that's why I no longer trust myself with heat tools.
And the soap is exactly why I chose to go with the costly castille soap when I did my medieval skincare routine. I sure do put my skin through a lot, but I wasn't risking chemical burns on my face.
Also now that I'm working on that farm, lets just say I honestly love using the clothes line. I very often forget things in the dryer, so having them flapping right in front of my face sure does remind me to bring in the linens.
I am very glad you did not burn your face! I like your face.
I have done laundry the old fashion way in my culture and could never understand the method portrayed in movies in pre washing machine periods: dumping everything in one tub.
Not all laundry is created equally and doesn't need equal treatment.
All laundry is separated in different piles and you start with the least dirty a couple garments at a time and keep watching the water.
When the water needs changing you start from the beginning again. So you wash the least dirty garments a second time and continue the first proces of adding garments and watching the water.
When you need to change the water, your rinse the twice washed clothes first and continue the proces.
So each new water is used 3 times. Wash, second wash, rinsing. The time in between doesn't mock the water as much and gives the clothes time a mini soak. So if you need a washing board or bat you used it during the second wash.
Even if clothes need soaking you wash them first or else they would be just marinating in their dirt.
I thought to be smart and wash the clothes once and rinse them and live to regret it. Time is very important in getting the clothes clean so I am not very impressed with all the quick wash features on the washing machine. The more time you take the less violence you need the longer you clothes will last. Like soaking your pot overnight instead of scrubbing the non stick coating off....
Many people still use lemon juice and sun bleaching for baby clothes. I have made soap from soapwort. It is brown and smells vaguely like beer, but surprisingly doesn’t make laundry smell.
I never had much luck with soapwort,but its still used to wash very old tapestries because it doesnt damage the colours.
As a kid in Central America (Costa Rica in the mid 1970s) our clothes were hand washed. There was a special type of soap used for this that looked like a block of styrofoam with blue specs that you could obtain from any pulperia (country store). The wet clothes were worked with the soap outside in a cement basin and then hung up to dry. I do not remember a washing board or anything like that. I cannot remember further details because I was only seven, but it was apparently effective and I have seen photos of Spain in the 1930s that showed a similar looking activity.
The blue specks were probably synthetic ultramarine, which is still found in whitening detergents today.
@@ragnkja i tried googling online and found a few pictures of communal washing sheds with women at work. Some from the 1920s. I only remember an individual basin for our house but it otherwise looks typical. The basin is called a pila. I found a mexican detergent for sale online (brand roma) which was powdered but was similarly white with blue specs (the ultramarine as you say) and had a picture of a woman sitting at her basin illustrated on the bag.
Here in spain soap was usually made from animal fat rather than olive oil since olives and olive oil were more expensive. It was made adding caustic soda (Sodium hydroxide) to it.
Totally fascinating history - Thank you as always! I'm sure you're right that the phrase "airing someone's dirty laundry" arises from the laundry practices of this era. Also, I'm always in awe of how enormously strong our ancestors must have been, before there were machines & electricity to help accomplish daily physical work.
The woman front and center in the picture at Timestamp 2:00, the dress she's wearing is the inspiration for the first Renaissance dress my husband ever made me. We are historical reenactors from Denmark and he is a historical tailor. It is so beautiful.
Where can I sign the "cotton gets smelly during the day" agreement? Not to mention the "dirt" in armpits on white cotton blouses....
I learned a lot and I think I'll go pet the washing machine. It might feel a bit lonely 🤣🤣🤣🤣😉
It really does make me wonder why we use such an ill-suited fiber for everything . . . (Colonialism and industrialization. That's why. 😑)
I always thank mine! After an old one broke down and I had two kids in primary school with sports and activities! (in the bathtub with detergent and a good old stomp without my trousers!) Hence, these days, it gets a gentle pat on the front and a "Thank you!".
Aquí en México usaban la raíz de una planta que se llama "palmilla", esa raíz producía jabón al mojarse y la vendían en los mercadillos. Es algo similar a las semillas de jabón que ahora son populares en Europa. Se dejó de usar esta raiz ya que la planta está en peligro de extinción ya que se usaba también para hacer sacos para café.
Natural fibers are amazing but it's a pity quality wool and linen aren't more affordable and accessible.
I can attest to (merino) wool base layers, not just socks, standing up well against odors even after multiple uses.
And for a historical task that's significantly easier now... all I can say is thank god for safety razors. Straight razors last for ages and can provide a great shave but what a nerve-wracking time sink.
I seem to be allergic to either the wool itself, something it’s been treated with, or the wool detergent, so I can’t wear it directly against my skin, at least not on the arms and torso. With a barrier garment, my wool jumpers have become essential for warmth, however, and I wear wool far more often than not.
Ahhh yes safety razors! I just got one to replace a modern cartridge razor and it is great. Straight razors are terrifying 😱
@@ragnkja Try alpaca wool it might be easier on your skin. You could also try Kashmir an Mohair as well both are great.
@@tylerrobbins8311
Even my own hair can cause such reactions if it ends up against my neck and/or chest at night when I let it down (but still keep it braided)l or else it would tangle too much) for the night, so it’s probably not an allergy to a particular species.
@@ragnkja I am sorry to hear, is it due to an illness? I am not sure if its will help but massaging in almond oil could help.
Having a laundry machine in the kitchen and opening the window to hang the clothes on the line to dry is something I can't complain.
Another thing I love not to make the medieval way is walking 10 km to go to the market and another 10 km back home with a basket of food on my head.
Where I live, it would have been rowing rather than walking, which means that I am also grateful for modern weather forecasts.
Oh my goodness YES. I occasionally struggle to walk ten *minutes* to the market and back with a wheeled shopping bag!
I’ve loved watching Ruth Goodman docos! She almost always explored period laundry which I’ve always found fascinating, & ‘History’s Worst Jobs’ had laundry in the medieval era as one of the worst jobs - Stuart Townsend did a mini-series on laundry in the 18th c, with a re-enactor who’s character story was both fascinating & kind of sad....
Her shows have sent me down *so* many wonderful research rabbit holes! I love them.
@@SnappyDragon
Omg! I feel seen! Lol
It feels like they don’t make that quality of documentary anymore, which is a bit sad- but, finding so many of them on UA-cam- as well as people like Townsend, Morgan Donner, & yourself has been fantastic!
I can empathize with all your health issues. I have been living with all the same for 30 years now. (I'll soon be 70) And I am so glad you made this video. I know what it's like to NEED your bed to be as comfortable as possible. I hope to order these sheets soon! Thank you so much for making this video and I wish you many comfortable nights as well.
Very interesting video!
As for things in probably don't want to do the medieval way but are interested in knowing: how did the means of carrying stuff around evolve? This means external stuff like purses, baskets, backpacks, etc., but also pockets in clothes.
I am glad I live in the modern age... I wash and dry my clothing in a machine, and then separate them into baskets based on what they are. I find folding my clothes to be more then I can handle, and so the basket method works for all except the few things I own that would then require being ironed (and usually also need to be dry-cleaned).
Another interesting and entertaining lesson from my favorite history teacher! My own experiences with wool and cotton socks agree with your conclusions. Woolen socks are the way to go. As a hobby cabinet maker, I’m more than happy I don’t need to chop a tree, saw and plane planks, and drill holes all by hand 🙏. Thanks V!
Many of your tools are also a lot more affordable because the people making them have access to consistent materials (e.g. steel of a particular composition) and labour-saving equipment. Saws, for example, used to be so expensive that they would only be used when you couldn’t get away with using a bladed tool.
Absolutely, that’s a great addition. It’s almost the polar opposite of today’s economics. Labor was very inexpensive, material was expensive and tools were precious.
What little I've seen of Medieval carpentry methods is incredibly clever, but also oh my gosh, *so* much work!! 🤯
@@Harko-
That’s because the materials themselves required a lot more labour to source or produce. The flush-trimming saw (which would probably have been the _only_ saw your medieval counterpart owned) is an example of something that was expensive because of the labour involved in making it. Take a look at one: For the medieval version, every single tooth would have been shaped and sharpened by hand.
@@ragnkja Saws teeth must be set and filed by hand, it's a lengthier process than sharpening a hatchet or a chisel. Carpenters that work with hand tools nowadays still follow the rule of "easiest tool to sharpen used first". Up to the early 20th century in France, we used mostly frame saws that require very little metal. They were not more expensive than a hatchet or plane iron from the blacksmith, they were more labor intensive to maintain.
The cheat we have today are cheap saws with hardened steel teeth that you throw away after a few years. But good quality saws still need sharpening.
Interesting and fun, thank you! In the UK only 58% own a dryer, so it’s pretty normal to dry clothes on a washing line outside when the weather is good and on an airer inside when it’s wet and cold outside. I do find the clothes are nice and fresh when they are dried in the sun. It’s always a gamble with the British summertime weather, though! My dryer never gets sheets as dry as they would be on the line.
I'm really curious what an "airer" is . . . is it a drying rack to hang things inside, or something more exciting?
@@SnappyDragon
Probably a foldable drying rack. They are a pretty standard household item in Germany as well. Even people who have dryers often use them for part of their laundry. Both because this increases longevity of your clothes and because electricity is so expensive here, you can actually see the difference in your monthly bill.
Living alone in a small flat, I don't even own a dryer, but drying clothes in winter (when the balcony mostly isn't an option) is very annoying. I can only do it on the weekend, pretty much, because it has to be in the morning and I have to be home most of the day, to open the windows frequently. Otherwise I will get water dripping from my windowpanes and mold eventually. It's very annoying.
With temperatures just above or below freezing and very high humidity most of the time, I can't imagine outside drying having been an option in Northern Europe in winter. Even if it didn't rain.
Let's say, you're done with the washing process by noon or so...your laundry won't be dry by nightfall. No way. And the next morning, it will be soaked by dew or covered in white frost, depending on the temperature and pretty wet again. It might have been an option in clear, cold weather, but we don't have that very often here. They must have dried stuff inside, in a room heated by a fireplace.
same here, ie. in Poland. Maybe some fancy people are getting driers these days, but I've never seen them anywhere and generally you just have a drying rack (that you'll put out outside if you have a garden or a balcony). Sun-dried laundry, especially linen, smells wonderful!
In France too having a dryer isn't the norm. We use a clothe rack or a line. Works well
@@raraavis7782 Temperatures around 0°C or 32 F° are difficult to dry laundry, but strong frost is really good for drying. The colder, the better. This knowledge was used before, you can check it out in the autobiographic book by Laura Ingalls Wilder called "The Long Winter". I live in Germany, and can dry my stuff outside until November, and then again with really cold nights in January or February. But in most years it is impossible to dry laundry during the twelve nights of Xmas, or "Raunächte". They are neither cold enough, nor warm enough for it.
Here in northen Sweden where I live, we did the laundry twice a year. Which usually happened spring and autumn/fall. Linjen wasn’t commonly used either, likely since flax don’t grow here and had to be bought with money. Money that barely existed among the settlers and Saamis in historical times.
There is an old saying in Spanish: _La mancha de la mora con la verde se quita._ "The dark (red) stain is removed by the green." This refers to the technique of using green grape juice to remove stains (wine stains in this instance), but it also became a love metaphor. There are a number of traditional Spanish songs that quote this saying, by it meaning that if your heart is stained (broken), a new (green) love will remove the stain, i.e., clean (mend) it.
For a few years I didn't have a washing machine, and would do my laundry by hand at home (in the style of the 19th century). That was the most in shape I've ever been and I absolutely hated laundry day! Thinking of doing it the medieval way (even with a wringing post, as I saw every time I saw Tales From The Green Valley...it makes me happy that someone else watched and enjoyed it!) makes my muscles hurt just to think about.
Doing medieval living history for work, I can confirm that wool hose hold up rather well with simply airing them out between wears! Their biggest enemy in my case is mud, because my shoes aren't quite watertight, and if the weather has been particularly nasty I might well find a bit of grime on the inside as well. My best fix is letting them dry, brushing off whatever I can, and then soaking just the feet in cold water for a while, maybe brushing again after.
When you think about it, imagine how many story telling posibilities fashions related to medieval clothing cleaning are opened when you know this: women who build their entire career about this and those who can vent their frustration about other story aspects by slapping clothes, or you've called that.
Long story short: I'm glad I'm subscribed. This channel is inspiring.
that drawing of the flax plant is so cute, i love old botanical illustrations
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 😅 All the photographs had more restrictive copyright.
I'm on my third load of the day, so perfect timing for sure.
Thanks for the flashback 🙃 I grew up in the country and hung out the laundry to dry...
I can remember my mother dashing out the door to pull in the wash when it would start to rain.
May your wash be easy! I do kind of want a clothesline because my linen things are always less wrinkly when they air-dry. But I have the advantage of living someplace where it doesn't rain for 8 months of the year 😅
@@SnappyDragon I do miss the fresh smell of line dried clothes, but not the occasional insects.
I think this Brooklinen sponsorship is one of the few I've seen from a yt channel that I'm actually interested in! I'm autistic and one of my big issues is textures, so I'll have to see if I can deal with the linen texture before it gets soft too, but if not, it can go on the guest bed until then 😂 and... frankly I don't have the energy to wash & change my sheets as often as I probably should, so bring less absorbent of sweat & oils is also good to hear.
Also very interesting & informative video! I just don't have anything constructive to comment about it, heh.
I’m also autistic, and since I wash my hair once a week, I change my pillowcase every week and the sheet and duvet cover every two (sometimes three) weeks. Using a matching pillowcase when I change everything and a non-matching one when I only change the pillowcase is an easy way to tell where in the cycle I am. It’s a bit tiring to do, especially if I leave it until late at night, though, because I have a weighted duvet with 9 kg of steel chains in it.
IDK if having swatches to feel would be helpful, but the Brooklinen fabric is very similar to Dharma Trading's 3.8 and 4.7oz linen, and Dharma does do swatches!
Oooh, swatches would absolutely be helpful. Thanks for the info! 👍👍
Amazing video! This was so fascinating to learn! (Italian idiot here, the "e" at the end of italian and latin words is pronounced, in the case of lavare it's a closed e and it's pronounced like the "a" in say.) Thank you so much for the different references through the video!
There are so many things that come to mind when I think of things I'm glad I don't have to do the Medieval way (and I'm sure many more that I take for granted so much that I haven't thought of them) but aside from the more immediately necessary things, it's writing. I cannot imagine trying to write my novel by hand on paper from start to finish, including all my outlines and notes that I am constantly reorganizing with relative ease thanks to Ctrl X and Ctrl V. Not to mention that even if I did like to write by hand like some authors do, I have access to all the paper I could possibly need. It would be awful to have writing ideas but nowhere to write them down because I'd run out of paper and cell phones weren't to be invented for 500 years.
I feel the same! I learned a long time ago that anything I try to write down on paper is doomed, but if I type my ideas they'll come out much better.
Linen sheets have made my menopausal self so happy. I still get night sweats but don't wake up feeling clammy and stinky.
I'm glad you did an ad for brooklinen, I love their sheets. It's great you can buy individual sheets too, I just buy two flat sheets because I don't like fitted sheets. Needed new sheets anyway. Great video.
Aww, thank you! Feel free to hang onto the link in the description; it's not an affiliate link but it does tell them I'm a good person to work with if it gets used!
One additional fact about medieval clothes, especially in the upper classes. They would have many gowns to choose from, so when they took one off, a maid would then powder the inside of the gown to discourage fleas and lice, and put them away in chests, so you’re not overstating the necessary use of linen at all. I love how the laundresses backed each other and helped each other through illnesses and such. It is just wonderful. Wish women could back each other nowadays within industries like that.
I suspect living in much smaller towns enabled those women to see 👀 those other women day in and day out. That way, it was easy to know that if you didn't help a girl out when she was down, you couldn't likely expect help when you needed it. So they did.
Honestly, I'm surprised by how much you say they washed their wool. I used wool diaper covers with my boys and for pee, I would just air them out. I hand washed them every 3-4 weeks or if there was poop. ( they were lanolized to be water proof so maybe that helps with the smell.)
We have other wool clothes and they very rarely get washed. The only exception is my husband's wool leggings which are machine washable.
Nice video. A statue should be erected for the inventor of the laundry machine I would say.
By the way le pescheur aus lavendieres (in modern French it would be le pêcheur aux lavandières) litterally means something like the fisherman who fishes laundresses. Or laundresses fisher.
(not te be confused with a pécheur, a sinner ;-) ). Interesting to see safety was already an issue in those days!
I’m sooooo sooooo glad that I have my own machines in my garage… Saturday’s my normal laundry day and most of the time my clean clothes aren’t even folded until the following Saturday (if I don’t filch the items straight out of the dryer to wear during the week)… I would not have clean clothes in medieval times. 🤣
Also co-signing that it takes a lot to make wool socks stink. I’ve switched to pretty much exclusively wearing my handknit wool socks year-round. They get washed once a month and aired out between uses and never smell. (Of course mind are made from washable wool, so less risk of felting if mishandled…)
My ambition in life is to move somewhere where I have my own machines 🤣
Townsend's has a great series from a few years ago about 18th century laundry, with a reenactor, which sounds pretty close to what you're describing.
They're great! A lot of the underlying methods were the same for centuries, even as the tools evolved a little.
There was also the terrible job of the "fuller", whos job it was to collect stale urine and wash clothes in it, typically done by stomping around barefoot in a barrel full of it, similar to how grapes are mashed for wine making.
Did you notice in Home Alone film the cousin who pees in bed is named " Fuller"? Nice little inside joke
Are you sure? I heard they used fullers earth, and did the trampling to felt the wool, to make it water proof.
Wool socks are AMAZING!!! Honestly, I'm in the process of converting my sock stash to wool. One thing to remember about modern wool socks is that it's very rare to find ones that are 100% wool because they don't last as long without at least some synthetic fiber, and if you are wearing them for any dirty activities like hiking, mountain biking, etc, you can just throw them in with your regular laundry. Some of my favorite brands are Darn Tough, Farm to Feet, and Minus 33 (these are my fave, but Darn Tough will replace any socks you buy from them, no questions asked, for life). My suggestion would be to look for wool socks that have at least 50% wool to really get the benefits, but I try to get higher percentages than that, usually between 60-70%.
I've got linen duvet & pillow covers (thanks Ikea)... lovely things. Also strongly recommend wool-filled duvets if you can get them (mine are Devon Duvets and Baavet, both UK wool and made).
I get really cross with historical novels who have their heroines in silk chemises... surely even under evening dresses the point is something washable between the dress and skin!
There was like 5 minutes in the 1890s when silk combinations were popular, but they were knit silk intended to be handwashed, and it was supposed to reduce bulk under the corset. They did not appear to catch on past that 5 minutes.
Let me add my recommendation for wool filled duvets! My great grandmother made a wool duvet from her sheep in Quebec for my mother. I inherited the duvet and had it cleaned and added some new wool and a new cover. It is the most amazing warmth you can imagine. It is insulating and breathable so you don't sweat, but you stay warm. If you are crafty, get wool batting and cotton fabric and make your own. Or talk to Zehlingers in Michigan and they will make it for you.
Feather duvets/eiderdowns are also wonderfully warm and light. I had one as a kid - home made as Mum made friends with the local duck shooters and they gave her the feathers, plus she had feathers she saved from poultry she (or rather, Dad) killed.
I have a wool stuffed pillow and I love it - or rather, the one I bought 30 years ago I love as it's solid but comfy but the one I bought recently to replace it feels more like polyester stuffing and it's not firm enough really. It also smells of wool which is odd as my old one didn't, even when it was new.
@@SnappyDragon yeah. This was in novels set in around 1810 to 1850. So no knit combies to be had. Also none of our heroines wear stays. Ever. (Until we get to the 1850s).
I have a wool filled duvet and it's so lovely. I like the weight of it when I'm sleeping and it's so cozy without making me sweat. Now I need to just save up money for linen sheets...
This was excellent entertainment while folding laundry.
As a knitter, I was really surprised when you were confused about socks, then I remembered that not everyone has the list of "why wool socks are awesome" memorized.
And, unfortunately, as a parent of a small child who has not entirely mastered the art of staying dry all night, laundry unfortunately does still involve pee.
Spring-cleaning my student dorms textiles ended up with me doing 12 loads of laundry... It was the pillow cases, the sofa cases, the kitchen towels and the blankets and mops. Although it took the entire afternoon and many back and forth trips at least I could leave it be while in the machines 😆
On top of those 12 loads I also did 4 loads of my stuff where one machine broke down and it's currently holding my comfy blanket and small panda teddy hostage, hopefully I can free them before the janitor gets back on Monday but I'm doubtful.
That sounds like a *workout!* Tell the machine I said to give your blanket and panda back or I will breathe fire at it 💚
I also demand that the washing machine releases your panda and blanket.
I will give it my most convincing attempt!
I got 3000 steps today just from doing trips to the laundry room.
Wrt the woolen socks, do consider that their shoes, if leather, would be made from traditional vegetable-tanned leather and not modern chrome-tanned leather. Vegetable-tanned leather is full of tannins that inhibit the growth of the bacteria that cause foot odour - so it's quite plausible that their socks and feet simply did not stink the way they do with modern materials.
Actually one of my friends brother decided to make himself linen shirts as a gym wear because of how absorbent and eco friendly it is.
Or more like tried as he cut two without seam allowance and then send the rest to his mother. He got a shirt in the end.
But as a Finn I can bet you that most of the laundry would have been done in sauna. You take your lake water, heat your sauna and the water canister and bam hot water. With most lakes in the world we have no shortage of fresh water over here.
But I don’t think that I am terribly of by assuming that my ancestors would have taken advantage of their all encompassing freezer of four months every year. Cold kills bacteria. If you are gonna have a clear night just leave your dirty cloths outside. This works on jeans btw.
I can imagine it also made a great excuse to spend a bunch of time somewhere warm!
Wow! This was really informative and entertaining. Thank you!
I was so curious why you were looking for the laudress...great video! Love the intro, oh and during winter I do not want to live without my tumbledryer.
I can easily manage without a tumble dryer, but without a washing machine? Not happening!
You basically saved that section of the video! 💚💚💚
@@SnappyDragon ohh, thanks. 😊
I lived off grid for a while and even with modern detergent, washing by hand was such a pain that it was much easier to drive the ten miles into town to do the laundry at the laundromat. We had clothes lines indoors and out though, and hung all our stuff to dry even in winter. The wood heat dried everything faster than the sunshine sometimes.
Okay, I was already sold on linnen, but now I need to increase my stock of wool socks. I wonder if I can find some thin ones... As you were talking about it I realized that all of that was true, and that the woolen socks don't pill like my modern winter socks do. I have several pairs of perfectly servicable warm socks that I don't wear because I'm too lazy to shave them, and I live in a country where we don't wear shoes inside, even at work most of the time, so socks need to look nice.
I was also thinking about my time in a developing country where we hand washed. I kind of liked laundry day then. But I was only washing my things, not a family's worth. And we had running water and laundry soap designed for cold water wash. Since the area was prone to flooding most houses were built on stilts and we hung our laundry under the house. At first I thought that wasn't great because it was out of the sun, but it was actually fantastic. We never had to worry about it raining on our clothes when we weren't home to take it in, and the wind blew through and dried them pretty quickly.
Medieval sources do also talk a lot about the social component of doing laundry together! I image it was really nice for them to have an excuse to get together, even if it was hard work.
@@SnappyDragon Here in China you will still sometimes see kids steping on the clothes in a big plastic tub, like they were stomping on grapes, to wash them. Sometimes it is more dancing than stomping, having fun getting the chores done.
I remember a documentary were they told about how the men of some suitor of Elizabeth 1 bought info about her periods from a laundress...
Washing clothes in rivers is still a norm in lots of parts of the world today! I only have my experience spending some time in an outer, rural village in Vanuatu, but I washed my laundry in the main river there and locals showed me how to do it properly, which was totally smacking the garments on the rocks (as opposed to scrubbing it against itself like I'd done at home for certain handwash items). Honestly, those clothes got so clean, and no holes showed up in my t-shirts, as happens when my washing machine snags them.
You are right about le pescheur aus lavandieres. It means the laundress fishers
My grandmother is always telling me how she would hand wash nappies and hankercheifs in a pot on the stove, stirring them with a wooden spoon. She says she was one of the first people to buy a washing machine as soon as they became available lol.
I just can't imagine sounds so awful 🤮
As someone with chronic fatigue, I can barely do modern laundry.
I really love your channel. Sheets, the bane of my life. I have gone through so many sets of modern sheets as the fitted sheet wears out so quickly. In contrast, the sheets from my childhood bed are still in almost pristine condition and I slept on longer. I am going to order some of the sheets you have sponsoring this video. Maybe I can stop my cycle of having to buy new sheets every 2 years. Which set did you say you bought?
Aww, thank you! What I have is the Linen "Hardcore" bundle, which has the Core sheets set plus a duvet cover and extra pillowcases. They do have just the sheet sets, and even some extra colors in the Last Chance section. The link in the description is tracked (although not an affiliate link), so it helps me out if you use that one!
@@SnappyDragon Thanks! I will check that out. I have been thinking of linen sheets for quite awhile and knowing someone who has then makes the decision easier.
Jersey sheets wear out _so_ fast! Just switching to fitted sheets that are woven with elastic in the corners rather than knit with elastic all around the circumference can make quite a difference.
I still use my childhood duvet cover for my daughter, which is still going strong since 1985!
@@katybeaumont mine were twin sheets from 196something that has Noah's Ark on them and I had a Mary Poppins quilted blanket. I had those on my bed till I left for college. I got a double bed in my room when I became a teen, but still slept in the twin bed.
We should all be very thankful to for all the conveniences we enjoy on the daily!!! It was an interesting vid. Thanks!!! Take care and have fun!!! 😷😎😷
This was so cool! Thanks for all the info and resources.
If I had to wash my clothes using medieval methods, I'd have a lot fewer clothes. And I'd learn to like wool socks.
As far as modern inventions, ovens. I bake and I would hate the process of baking without my gas oven.
The White House (US) had a laundry room where laundry could be hung to dry. I think it was Dolly Madison who used it. There was a damage from the damp clothes and fires used to help dry them.
This was super interesting! As much as I love having a washing machine, I think we should all get to beat the heck out of our clothes once in a while, as a treat ^^
Also, have you seen Daisy Viktoria's video about snow washing wool? She goes in depth about the methods and the science of it, as well as trying it out herself. It's really neat!
I am sixty years old the past is not that far away -when I was a kid they were disappearing but people had a copper = a large metal bowl the size of a washing machine bowl - this sat over a fire in the back yard and was filled with water and clothes and then boiled - the clothes would be scrubbed with soap and the cold water as they went in or would be soaked = after they boiled housewife or eldest kids would stir with long handled poles - the scum would be strained off and the poles used to get the clothes out - we had a mechanical mangle you turned the handle otherwise you twisted the clothes' with your hands or with the pole - saw women who would dip their hands into boiling water grab out a steaming pair of jeans bare handed and then twist them dry - this was in tropics so bloody hot = last one i saw in home use was on a station or ranch which did not have electricity in 1979
I'm most thankful for modern medicine! To start with, I'm RH negative; my three children are RH positive. Due to an early miscarriage, none of them would have survived long after birth. If they had, we'd have lost my oldest to Chron's disease at age 14. The second to extreme congestion/colic/asthma in her first year. My son, might have stood a better chance since he has no chronic health issues. Anyway, it's been a long time since I yearned for "the good old days!"
As far as modern wool washing, keep in mind a lot of commercial wool now is "superwash" wool that has been chemically treated to prevent felting/shrinkage during heat and agitation. That allows for a lot of our nicer wool socks to make it through machine wash/dry cycles without turning into thick toddler socks.
broth, any kind, we just open a box or can and off we go. I have made it the long way and it is so much work - tastes great but not ten hours' great.
I have been very grateful recently for bullion cubes.
Minute rice or noodles to add to the broth.🍜
I was going to say, I don't even use a box! I have a jar of soup base, and I'll only make broth the long way when someone is ill and needs matzoball soup/"Jewish penicillin".
4:00 - 4:20 i didn't know this!! thats so interesting, i thought maybe i was just sweaty and thats why my cotton shift never works great lol
Get thyself some linen, friend!
In a pinch you can also wash 100% wool with regular shampoo. It's not quite as good as wool wash, but it does work and you probably already have it.
I'm very pleased that eyeglasses and contact lenses have been invented because I am literally blind without them. With them I see just fine; without them the world disappears into a blur less than a handspan from the end of my nose. Would not like to try living in a time or place where vision aids were not available.