I recently found myself bent over a washboard, questioning whether every item I scrubbed (mostly work clothes, i.e. ratty T-shirts, torn jeans, etc.) were really worth it.
I’ve considered capsule wardrobes and generally minimizing clothing through the lens of lowering the negative economic and social impacts of fast fashion.
But what of laundry?
I’m lucky to be able to wash with well water and solar energy, and usually opt for line-drying.
I’d never given it much thought, until our washer broke down and took a week or so to fix. Unfortunately, I was already overdue for laundry day — hence, the washboard.
I took the washer apart, determined it needed a new pump. And while the part was on order, I set to work with a washboard, large tub, small tub and small hand-crank washer.
The hand-crank worked reasonably well for light to moderately dirty small loads. I mostly use this washer for felting, as the electric washer is too gentle to properly felt woolen items (normally a good thing).
In a pinch, this spinning plastic contraption works for its intended purpose — cleaning clothing.
After sealing the lid, I began cranking away. The instructions suggest a couple minutes, but multi-tasking with rinsing loads and scrubbing more soiled items, I agitated some, let soak and cranked some more, before continuing the cycle.
The process builds a little arm muscle, but is no biggy. Rinsing and wringing though, are a pain. Working my way through several loads in a day, I set up a rinse bucket outdoors, which made easier work than trying to get the soap out of each item in the sink, or worse yet while still in the washer.
Instead of a handy-dandy spin cycle, I had to twist each item to get as much water out as possible before hanging on the line.
The washboard was a similar situation, but instead of cranking, I used elbow grease to scrub clothing along the soaped up metal ridges.
While I scrubbed, rinsed and wrung out, I considered how generations of (mostly women) did this task with even fewer amenities than these. At least I didn’t have to fetch water or make soap.
The metal scrub board, an alternative to a carved wood board, wasn’t invented until around 1833. Hand-crank drums, similar in concept to the one I used, were patented during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s. Manual wringers were added shortly, to press water out of clothing.
In 1908 the first electric washer, the Thor, debuted. Other companies, such as Maytag and Whirlpool jumped into the washer business around the same time. Early washing machines had wooden drums.
Technology continued progressing during the last century, but household washers and laundromats are still relatively new luxuries. I grew up hearing stories of my grandmother, lacking a home washer, doing laundry by hand. She washed my mother’s school uniform and my grandfather’s factory work clothes daily without the ease of doing laundry that I take for granted.
Toiling away, comparing past to present, I began to contemplate the connection between fast fashion and electric washers. On the one hand, washers facilitate owning many changes of clothing infrequently washed in large loads — an onerous task if done by hand. On the other hand, machine washing encourages us to acquire many changes of clothing so that we can avoid waste of energy and water if we washed frequent small loads.
I appreciated the perspective a day of doing laundry by hand gave me, but am relieved the new pump came and I installed it simply following a YouTube video.
