Launder

"Wash Day"

In addition to cooking and eating, the kitchen was also the location for other chores like washing and ironing clothes. Sally Haner, a Three Rivers farm woman, complained in her diaries about the dreaded weekly wash day: "Monday morning, wash day a most monstrous large wash." One can imagine why she dreaded laundry day with pounds of washing to do by hand, and a washboard her most modern washing appliance.

Then washing was always followed by ironing yards and yards of material to be ironed with a heavy sad iron, so called because of its weight--though one might wonder if tears were ever shed over this chore. Irons were heated by placing them on a hot stove, or in later models by placing hot coals in a hollow iron. They came in all shapes and sizes for different purposes. Shown here are two examples, the sad iron for general purpose use, and the fluting iron which created pleats--a most dreadful job in the summer heat.

Sewing and mending clothes and other household textiles was a frequent activity of women and girls. Nothing was wasted, least of all clothing, which was mended, restyled, expanded and contracted as needed by the wearer. Once a garment was worn beyond respectability, the fabric might have been reused in a quilt, for cleaning rags, or sold to paper factories. Women exchanged tasks as their skills allowed: some were weavers, some spinners. Others were more adept at sewing and other forms of needlecraft.

Kalamazoo Direct to You - Highlights
  1. Checker Cab
  2. Smelting Pot
  3. Gibson Guitars
  4. Homer Stryker and his Revolutionary Bed
  5. Upjohn's Pills
  6. A. M. Todd
  7. People of the Three Fires
  8. The General Store
  9. New Settlers to Kalamazoo: The Importance of the General Store
  10. Something for Everyone at the General Store
  11. The Finer Things in Life: Saving for the General Store
  12. Hub of Information: The General Store
  13. 1848 General Store Ledger
  14. Farm Life 1860-1940
  15. Entertainment 1860-1920
  16. "Wash Day"
  17. Food Preparation 1870-1930
  18. Squirrel Tailed Pumper
  19. The Kalamazoo Mall
  20. Victor Gruen: The Man with a Plan
  21. Dreams We Shared
  22. The 1980 Kalamazoo Tornado
  23. Lincoln's Speech
  24. Mystery of the Mummy