"Washing" Clothes Recipe

Years ago, and Alabama grandmother gave the new bride the following recipe, exactly as written. Found in an old scrapbook with spelling errors and all.
There are a couple pictures ~ but I don't know how to get them up ~ with this new computer that has Windows 10 ```
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Washing Clothes Recipe.

Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water.

Set tubs so smoke won’t blow in eyes if wind is pert.

Shave one whole cake of lye soap in boilin water.

Sort things, make 3 piles –1 pile white, 1 pile colored, 1pile work britches and rags.

To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smoot, then thin down with boiling water.

Take white things, rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard, and boil,

Then rub colored don’t boil just wrench (For non-Southerners-wrench means rinse) and starch.

Take things out of kettle with broom stick handle, then wrench,

(for non-Southerners -wrench means rinse) and starch.

Hang old rags on fence. Spread tea towels on grass.

Pore wrench (Fpr non -Southerners wrench means rinse)water in flower bed.

Scrub porch with hot soapy water. Turn tubs upside down.

Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs.

Brew cup of tea, set, rock a spell, and count yore blessings.

I remember my grandmother on my Daddy's side, having a wringer washer on her porch. She had stepped up from the warsh pot and fahr.

If you've got a pot of wrench water on the porch, you're probably worshin clothes.

My grandmother made and used lye soap and worshed clothes like this, as reported by my mother.

Her neighbor, a little later in life, was from Derbyshire, England. She would laugh at that pronunciation of wash and Washington by people in the Pacific Northwest. That might have included me but I have tried to be conscious of the pronunciation.

I visited and knew 2 of my grandmother's friends after her passing. Mom was a distant penpal with another for many years and would read her letters to us. These "aunts" helped me better understand grandparents who were gone when I was still in my single

digitS'.

My grandma even used lye soap to wash dishes. What's really strange is when she killed a chicken, plucked it, gutted it and took it in to finish cleaning it in the sink, she would sprinkle Cheer laundry powder on the surface of the bird and scrub it with a scrub brush....guess she REALLY wanted to remove that barnyard dirt from the skin, huh?

Grandma would give the dishwater, with all the food scraps in it from the dishes, to the hogs and the chickens. Said it kept them healthier. She didn't know that the lye soap, acting as a surfactant to the internal parasites, was helping deworm these animals....but she just knew it kept them healthier, so she did it.

Folks were smart through experience back then, wisdom passed down the generations, but is sadly now getting lost as people left the farms for the city and suburbs.

I was raised up off grid, so washing in tubs with a wash board is all in my wheelhouse of experience....LOTS of clothes. I can tell you that one gets some really red, sore hands from washing on a washboard and plenty of smashed fingers when using a wringer to transfer them to the wrench water.

<~~ still uses homemade lye soap
And castile soap (but not homemade).

Anyone know how term wash woman was some one who loved to gossip came about ?

Nyboy said:

Anyone know how term wash woman was some one who loved to gossip came about ?

Click to expand...

Why sure. Long before indoor plumbing was available, women did the wash at the local river bank or waterhole. Sometimes, it was the only way they could even get otherwise adult conversation. Many cultures restricted women to their homes, or only being allowed to be in public areas with male relatives for protection. As all women were deemed possessions.
So, that pretty much left the well, and the wash areas for other human interactions. Isolation is detrimental to anyone and everyone.