The Old Maytag

I dearly love my automatic washer and wouldn’t give it up unless absolutely forced to do so. But there were some perks to doing the wash in the “old fashioned” way.

Mother had a Maytag wringer washer when we lived in Peoria in 1952. We had an apartment, and since there were two other apartments in the building, we were assigned a wash day. I believe our day was Monday. During the school year Mother did all the wash herself, but come summer I was involved, whether I wanted to be or not. The basement was dark, as I recall, and the outdoor clothes lines were stretched across a miniscule yard in back of our apartment house. One of my jobs was to take a wet rag and wash down each line to make sure there were no bird leavings or aluminum corrosion to soil the clothes. In the winter the clothes were hung on aluminum lines in the basement, and that was handier, but you couldn’t leave clothes hanging there because the other tenants would be using them the next day.

My Mother was very picky about how things were hung on the lines. I learned that you put three clothes pins across the top of towels so they didn’t get sway-backed. And handkerchiefs were folded in half and hung tightly by the corners so they’d be easier to iron. Shirts were hung by the tails, and the tails of T-shirts were looped over the line for about 4 inches so you didn’t have “ears” on the bottoms of the shirts.

When we moved to a bigger apartment in what had once been a large house, we didn’t have laundry privileges in the basement. Our Maytag sat in the corner of the kitchen which had once been a large bedroom. On laundry day it was pulled out and filled with water. We had the attic for storage, and we’d lug the galvanized tubs from the attic and set them on milk crates for the two rinses that were mandatory. The house had a back stairway, so we could take the wet clothes to the back yard in good weather. When it was raining or cold, we hung the clothes on lines in the attic. At least we didn’t have to rush to get the clothes taken down.

We moved to a house in 1954 and had the basement to ourselves. The Maytag sat in a corner waiting patiently for wash day which could now be any day of the week. Mother had a rule of thumb: If the weather was good on Monday, it would be raining on Friday…and vice versa. It never seemed to fail.

Father strung up sturdy aluminum lines in the back yard and in one side of the basement. We’d hang the things that took longest to dry on the farthest back lines. As thinner things dried, we’d take them down so we’d have room for more wash.

After I was married, I used laundromats for umpteen years. In 1973 my husband and I and three children moved back into that house in Peoria. Father had bought Mother an automatic washer, but she took it with her when they moved to the farm. The old Maytag was there, and I knew how to use it. For several months I had a weekly date with her.

There were a lot of advantages to old fashioned washday. For one thing, it was all over in a single day. You started with hot water in the Maytag and cold water in the rinse tubs. White things went in first while the water was hot and clean. When the first load was through swishing, you’d put them through the wringer into the first rinse and load the washer up with load number 2. While #2 was swishing, you’d plunge the clothes up and down in the water and then put them through the wringer into the third rinse. As soon as they were rinsed, you’d wring them into a plastic-lined bushel basket, and take them to the lines to be hung up. When you got back, load #2 would be ready to go into the rinse. Each load took about 20 minutes and we usually had 6 or so loads.

The last load was reserved for rugs and rags. Once it was on the line, you had to empty the washer and rinse tubs, mop up the water on the floor, put things away and wait until it was time to take the clothes off the lines. Nothing smelled as sweet as clothes dried on outdoor clothes lines!

I’ve often thought I would like to do my wash the old fashioned way again, just for the fun of it. When wash day was over, there was a feeling of satisfaction that I don’t get from my automatic washer. I think Mother’s old Maytag is in the barn at the farm, all covered with years of dust. I wonder if it still runs.