Aren't we lucky?

My mum's first washing machine was a Hotpoint Countess which she loved. The only problem she had was whilst putting the washing through the electric wringer - unfortunately she was wearing a blouse with a large bow on the front and that started going through the wringer too! Fortunately the wringer had an emergency bar which she quickly pushed up and it opened the rollers - phew!
BTW I still was duvets in the bath if they are too large to go in my machine

I grew up in New York City. As a little girl I used to love going with my mother to the "Laundromat" every week. Machines cost 10 cents per round and you brought your own detergent. It was situated around the corner from our building and I would help sort, load and fold etc. By the time I was twelve, it became my job to go it alone on Saturday mornings. (not so much fun then).

A short time after that, my dad bought our very own washing machine. It was a Bendix that stood proudly in a corner of our kitchen and it was turquoise blue in color. I remember thinking how shiny and gorgeous it was and how wonderful that we had it. We had a clothes hanging device in our bathroom but since capacity was limited, everything else went to the rooftop during summer and the Laundromat in winter.

I remember my gran using a single tub machine with an agitator on the side, my other granny had one with a big central sort of spindle which churned the washing back & forth, they both then used to haul it out with big tongs, rinse on one sink, then put it through the wringer, clamped between the double sinks. My mum had a twin tub for many years, my dad was an expert at fixing them! When I got my first full time job in 1979, my mum used my dig money to buy an automatic!

When I was a child my mother sent sheets and towels to the laundry so she "only" had to hand wash everything else. Later when the Laundrette opened we used to lug two big bags of washing down there every Saturday. When I got married a friend gave me her old Servis washing machine but it ripped all DH's shirts to pieces. What a thrill it was when we bought an automatic Indesit with the yellow switch for biological powder!

I remember visiting an Aunt for a week in the holidays. Monday was washing day, out came big old drum she would put in back yard and stood for most of morning hand washing then putting cloths through the mangle, then lugging buckets to change the water. Took up most of day by time she emptied water cleaned up and hung washing out to dry oh and all socks were put on the aga to dry. Now we throw it in and go shopping come back and it's done.

Yes we are lucky, in fact I love washing, and the hanging out and taking it in, smelling so out of doors!
I can wash every day, but then there is the ironing to be done, not quite so enthusiastic with that.

In my childhood we had a brick built copper in the kitchen for doing the whites , with a wringer/mangle that used to be on a stand and taken out into the back yard on good washing days .Other washing was done by hand in a "dolly tub" with a dolly stick or a metal topped posser. Ironing it all was an even bigger problem as no elecricity in the cottage we lived in only gas.So we had to have two flat irons on the go. One in use and one heating up again. I had two children close together and had two lots of terry nappies to deal with each day.First boiling them up in a bucket on the stove, before getting a secondhand Baby Burco to make things easier and a spin dryer. When I eventually got a brand new twin tub I thought my birthdays had all come at once. I used this for about 11 years before getting an automatic, when my MiL informed me my washing did"nt look half as good as it used to do in this automatic contraption as she called it.!

I remember, when I was five, next door neighbour with four adult children washing every Monday in "The Copper" she used a posser. She spent all Monday doing it. I first met Ken Dodd in this house he was a friend of her daughters. They were in an entertainment troup together.

Young people seem to think everything was easy for older people in the 50's 60's. My Mum got a twin tub eventually but we lived in a prefab that was built for War Workers. When they went back home to where they had originated from the prefabs were allocated to returning Service men. My Dad was one of these. They had metal window frames and tin roofs the noise when it rained was awful.

My mum had a twin tub when we were small and I did too when I was a single parent in the 1980s. I loved it - the spin was much better than washing machines you get now.

Living with gran in a tenement house, one of the few left standing in our bombed out street, we had an ancient range to heat the water and then a tin bath and wash board, pullies to put the washing out on, using big wooden pegs........gas mantles for lighting and a tiny television..........right up until I was a teenager in the swinging sixties.....newspaper square on a nail behind the toilet door and the whole room smelled of Woodbines as other tennants smoked in there.......big, scrubbed every day toilet seat, and the step had to be whitened every day too.......happy days.oh and the iron was plugged into the overhead light socket !!

Chicken,Hotpoint top loader!!Wish you could still get them.

We lived in a Victorian cottage with a wash house. Our copper had been taken out but our neighbour still had hers and would light the fire under it on washdays. Mum used to give her our old shoes for fuel as they burnt with more heat than wood. And our iron was plugged into the light socket too radicalnan. Thanks for the reminder.

In the 50's, my Mum spent all day Monday doing the washing. She put a large tin tub on planks over the bath, then washed everything by hand, including the sheets etc. Everything was rinsed in the bath, put through the mangle then carried downstairs, ( we lived in the upstairs flat) down a side alley to the garden out the back. It must have been exhausting.

We always had cold meat, mashed potatoes & pickle for tea, with my Mum's cake or apple pie left over from Sunday. It's still my favourite tea now 60+ years later.

I don't feel guilty just very grateful

I am sure our Mothers would be ever so pleased for us that we do not need to go through what they went through

As I am sure modern technology will also provide contractions that we did not have that our children will benefit from

I remember most of these ways of washing too, but am on a slightly different track: the fridge. Marvellous invention. My parents had a gas fridge when I was a child. I was nearly grown up before they changed to an Electric fridge.
Years ago now, I was visiting a friend who asked me to get a packet of butter out of her fridge. I looked everywhere for it and ended by asking her where she kept it? "In the compartment marked butter" was her reply. I started to laugh and she looked at me in amazement, until I explained that in my childhood home that compartment was reserved for vaccines, as Daddy was a GP with his consulting - room in our home. Quite without thinking, I had, believe it or not, carefully refrained from using that compartment in my own fridge for butter or anything else. How daft can you be? Anyone else done anything similar?

When I got married in 1975 my parents bought us an automatic washing machine as a wedding present. My Mum was heard to mutter 'I don't know why we're buying you an automatic when we can't afford one for ourselves'. They carried on using their twin tub all their lives.

Yes indeed I do. My poor old mum didn't have a washing machine unti the mid 1970s when we went to work and bought her one. She used to wash everything by hand and I would often see her toiling over the bath washing the larger items...I feel terrible about this now! My parents did not have a phone or a car, but we had so much love and happiness at home..these things didn't matter.

I do remember the excitement when my parents got their first fridge. We froze orange squash in plastic beakers and pretended they were 'jubblies'.

Bearing in mind those days before we females were 'liberated' from the grind of household chores, how foolish we were not to take advantage of the newer technology and blithely entered into work (in some cases equally hard) outside of the home. I often jest that 'a woman's place is in the home, with her feet up and a cup of coffee/tea in her hand'. (This poster is now ducking down to avoid the barrage).

I'd like to add to that Direne - maybe have a bell push within reach to summon more coffee/tea and a piece of cake!! To my darling mum and I this was our idea of heaven