Clothes Wringer Washers

Jason Jordan shared

 I remember seeing pictures of women in the third world along the bank of a river, each with a little rock pounding some clothing on a big rock. So even this old wringer washer was a significant step forward in labor savings.

I've actually run clothes through the wringer helping my Grandmother and my mother-in-law. The key was to make sure all the buttons were lying flat and that you spread out the clothes item to use the full width of the wringer.

These washers had an agitator, but the notion of spinning the clothes dry had not yet been invented. Also, the washer had just soapy water. You rinsed them by turning the wringer so that the clothes fell into a tub of rinse water standing next to the washer. Since the same wash water was used for all of the loads on laundry day, it was important to start with the relatively clean, fade-free clothes and end with the heavy-duty, dirty clothes. You then pulled them out of the second rinse water and wrung the water out by hand. Then you hung them up to dry.

When we bought our house in 1976, in our basement was a two-bay concrete laundry tub that was intended to hold the rinse water for these washers. We didn't use it for that, we bought a modern washer.

Jim Vanosdol shared