Doing The Laundry

In my home in the master bathroom I have a tall closet, the bottom half of this closet has three shelves, on each shelf there is a laundry basket, the top shelf is for whites, the middle shelf is for colors and the bottom shelf is for work clothes. Now when one of these baskets gets full, I take it down to the laundry room and wash the laundry that is in that basket.

The other day I noticed that all three baskets were full, so off to the laundry room I went with a basket of dirty clothes, each basket had it's turn with the washing machine, each basket held two loads of laundry, so when the laundry was done, I had done six loads of laundry and six loads of drying and six loads of folding clothes and putting the clean clothes away.

That evening as I thought about this chore, it gave me a peaceful feeling knowing that when I would go to bed that evening, those laundry baskets were back in the closet empty and the dresser drawers had clean socks and underwear, plus my sweetheart had clean work clothes hanging in the closet for another day.

Has it always been this way?  No!!

When I was first married my Sweetheart was in the Navy, it was during the Korean War and we were living on a Naval Base in Navy housing.  Our first home was a Quonset hut, then a small trailer, next we lived off base in an old house that had been converted into an apartment house, we lived upstairs,  we had two room, a bedroom and a living room/small kitchen, we shared the bathroom in the hall with the other small apartment, next we moved back on base to the Victory Homes.

In all our homes at this time we did our laundry at the laundromat. This is what we had to do, but it took time, planning and money.

When we were living in the Victory Homes our daughter Marta was born, now we not only had our things that needed to be washed, but we also had diapers and baby clothes that needed to be washed along too.

The Victory Homes were built in long rows, there were five dwellings in each row, each dwelling had one, two or three bedrooms. we had a one bedroom and we lived in the middle dwelling. Now the rooms were a nice size and the kitchen too was a good size, the stove was a small apartment size but there was a area that was prepared for a washing machine and out the back door there was a clothesline for each apartment.

We were now a family with a baby and we needed some kind of a washing machine, so we started to look to see what we could find, soon my sweetheart found a used washing machine for sale and we bought it and brought it home.

This was in the early fifties and washing machines were not modern like they are today, but they did work and they did wash the clothes.  I don't remember what make this machine was and I really don't care, all I know is that my clothes came out clean.

This washing machine had an agitator in the center that would move back and forth to wash the clothes, it also had a rubber bladder that would squeeze the water out of the clothes after they were washed and after they were rinsed.  When my machine finished its cycle I would then take these clothes out to the clothes line to dry, just like my mother did when I was a young child.

When the Korean war was over and my sweetheart was discharged, we packed our worldly possessions in a trailer, [which my sweetheart built], along with a small baby crib, a rocking chair and my trusty washing machine with the rubber bladder and home we went.

That washing machine served us for many more years, but I still was hanging the wet clothes outside for many more years even after a new washing machine entered my life.

To me there is nothing more satisfying than having clean sheets on my bed to sleep on, or putting on clean clothes in the morning or to see my empty clothes baskets on the shelves in the bathroom closet.

I say thank you my dear washing machine and my dryer too, for making my life just that much easier than it was in years gone by.