Aren't we lucky?

my mother had servants! Dirty clothes went on the floor at night, came back clean and ironed the next day...
Seriously, I never stop thanking the washing machine inventors for them. The drudgery and difficulties of washing - terry nappies especially when DCs were little - don't bear thinking about.

My mum used to boil up our whites in a bucket on the stove, then used a spin dryer..

My maternal gran had a brick "copper" with a metal inner and you lit a fire under it to boil the water for washing. My paternal gran ran a laundry in her back yard, employing several local women. The cheapest wash was a bag-wash where all the items were in an old pillow case and just washed as a lump. If you couldn't afford to have your sheets ironed, for a small sum you could ask to have them put through a huge mangle called "the rock" when they were dry, which took out the worst of the creases.( This mangle had a huge drum which was filled with stones.)The posh houses with maids sent her their caps and aprons and Gran was trained in the use of a goffering iron for the frills.
My Mum had a Bendix automatic washing machine in about the late 40s/early50s, the first one in the street. One day, she hid her savings in the drum because she was going out for the day, forgot they were there and did a load of washing, then wondered why the clothes were covered with bits of paper. Amazingly, the bank told her to collect the metal strips as proof, and refunded nearly all of the money!
When I was first married, I took the big stuff to the communal wash house in Tottenham and did the rest in the sink in our little flat. When the first baby arrived I had a Burco boiler, then a little Hoover with an agitator in the side and a mangle on the top (second-hand of course).My Dad then bought us an automatic-- I think it was a Hoover, turquoise and white with a sloping front. It ripped the washing to shreds and all the nappies had fringes round the edges. That was followed by a twin-tub then a Hotpoint top-loader, the best machine I ever had and you could pop things in part way if you'd forgotten them. Gosh--memories, memories.

My mother used to boil the whites in an enamel bucket on the stove. I worked in hospital and my coats were always the whitest!
Not long after we married my FIL wrote a book and bought me a Hoover Keymatic with his earnings. I thought it had dropped from Heaven!
Now my greatest delight is to do the washing (in the machine) hang it on the line and then iron it . The smell is divine!

Yes, I remember days without washing machine at home. Awful! Fact is I'm kinda glad because it makes me so grateful for the little I do have. Trouble is many of our children have only ever experienced these 'luxuries' as the norm and don't seem grateful for much at all in my personal experience. I do believe having 'much' often makes them less resilient. Not sure..... but we certainly can't turn back the tide. Not would I want to. Very interesting thread. Thank you.

I remember my first washing machine was a twin tub. The thing I remember most was how good it was for boiling the Christmas puddings. ? i used to put the wooden seat of the swing on the bottom as this could take 4 basins, then open the back door, put the washing machine in front of it, fill it with water then set it to heat, resetting it from time to time. Result, four well cooked puddings and no steam-filled kitchen. ?

my grandmother used to live in a two up two down house with a scullery where she did her washing - no hot water then. she had a HUGE mangle and did all the washing for herself, her husband and five children.
my mother had a "copper" which lived outside and which was dragged indoors every week, connected up to the gas [mum disconnected the gas cooker to do the copper - no thoughts of gas safe then!]. this seemed to live in the kitchen all day although any rinsing was done in the sink [and the "blue" too] and then the washing was hung up on the line outdoors.
i had a single tub washing machine with a mangle when i was first married in 1969. it was second hand as my mother had acquired a twin tub at that time. i also acquired a little spinner which spun itself around the kitchen!!
the washing was put out on to my whirly line which was so easy to manage.
after a while i got a twin tub and thought i was in heaven - so much easier to do the weekly wash.
it wasn't until much later that i got an automatic - the children used to sit in front of it and watch the washing going around - kept them quiet for hours!
now i've got a washer/dryer and it's so much easier [apart from the week we were without it after it decided it wouldn't work].
i just wonder what will be invented in the future.

When I married in the seventies I had one of those twintub machines that required filling from the tap, heating, doing various loads, lifting out and putting in the spin compartment, then pumping out the dirty water into the sink. Nappies were a huge chore! However my mother washed everything by hand until I was a teenager, so she would have thought my twin tub was a luxury. I too am writing a family history for my grandchildren.

My paternal grandmother was blind, had 6 children, they lived in 2 rooms. Water was from a pump at the end of the lane and the toilet, at the end of the garden, was a bucket with planks over forming a seat. And cooking was done on a range.

My mother only ever had a boiler and a mangle for the washing and so did I until we had children, but I still did clothing by hand to save on water.

We didn't have a TV till I was 13, (1959). I suppose that's the point, our ancestors didn't have home entertainment to occupy them and accepted the fact that their time would be mostly taken up with chores.

I am writing my family history for my Cs and GCs so that they will have an idea of what life was like from a personal point of view. Although I talk about these things, they will mostly be forgotten in the mists of time. So if it's written, it will be remembered.

I only feel guilty because it only when reflecting now that I could have helped my parents out more. I worked and had two children and we lived an hour away from them but I do my daughter's washing and ironing now as she's full time, on her own with a child and she does own an automatic! My mum wasn't a well woman and they lived in a three storey house which was freezing even in summer! Dad lugged the vacuum upstairs but it was damned hard work to vacuum all upstairs.

I didn't have a washing machine until my children were out of nappies. I used to boil up my Baby Burco every day, and it always boiled over onto the red Marley kitchen tiles, fading them. The non-boil items I scrubbed on the draining board with a laundry brush. The washing took most of my morning each day! I did have a spin dryer, for which I was very grateful.
I have an elderly neighbour who has no washing machine or kitchen equipment such as microwave or electric kettle. She tramples her bedding in the bath on washing day and does everything else by hand daily. She is very thrifty despite being quite well off, having just spent a week in Devon in a £350 per day hotel! Just different priorities I suppose!

M0nica, I had an English Electric Liberator way back in the 60's, and it was very smart,(as in looks) . We moved here to Berkshire in 68 and it came with us. It was my first automatic washing machine, but it did have a will of it's own. Something to do with a solenoid switch, I was told, as when one of the washing programmes changed cycle, it changed the station on the radio from 4 to 2. Mum had had a gas heated boiler with an agitator paddle in the top, complete with mangle. That was replaced with a twin tub and spin dryer that used to dance across the kitchen.

We managed a 25 bedded residential home for people with learning disabilities in the 70s. Our first washing machine was a twin tub, fortunately the bedding went to a laundry, hard work indeed.

Both of our families had washing machines very early. DH's mother had an English Electric Liberator. My DM acquired a Hoover in about 1951, just after my sister was born. It still needed a lot of manual input. The machine was filled with water by a hose from the tap, the machine heated the water and washed the clothes, but then they had to be lifted up and put through the attached electric wringer, the water was pumped out, the machine refilled, clothes back in, rinsed, rewrung and hung out, still less effort than all the hand washing and scrubbing.

Brings back memories of help my mum in the 'washouse' with the wringer,copper (boiler) not to forget the 'blue rinse' those whites were definitely white !

Yes, we are so fortunate as compared to our mums or our children, a blessed generation.

Yes we are indeed lucky, at least with our gadgets. My mother had 7 children. She did all her washing in the sink and then put it through a mangle.

Life is certainly easier today in many aspects but it's harder in other ways so I don't feel guilty about it.

Laundry is certainly easier now. When I was a child my mother had a wooden tub, together with what we called a 'posher.' It was like a wooden sieve on a long handle, which you used to bash the clothes with. Years later we finally graduated to a washer with a rubber mangle, and later still we had a twin tub.