Old-fashioned Laundry Days

Whenever I see clothes hanging outdoors, I think of my mother. She loved laundry days and the smell of fresh sheets and towels. She also admired other people’s laundry on clotheslines.

You don’t see wash on clotheslines much anymore now that most people have driers. My mom didn’t like to have clothes battered around in a machine because to her wash was a living thing that required gentle care. I know that sounds silly to today’s busy homemakers, who have no time to spend a whole day drying clothes outside.

Yet it’s true our linens and clothes lasted a lot longer with her tender loving care. She also mended clothes at their first sign of wear.  She would never hold things together with safety pins or let her children wear anything with holes.

Her example edified me, but did not carry over to her offspring.  I enjoy the convenience of driers  and would much prefer to use my time on other things like reading, games, exercise, or TV.  I am not as frugal as my mother in mending things in order to make them last forever. 

So nostalgia creeps over me when I remember what pride she took in hanging clothes outside to be bleached by the sun and saturated with fresh  air. Laundry days were a lot of work with a wringer washer  and wooden clothespins, but  it was a labor of love for my mother. Thanks, Mom.