THE RELENTLESS FREQUENCY OF WASHING DAY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 93, 13 January 1908, Page 3

THE RELENTLESS FREQUENCY OF WASHING DAY.

Under this heading a writer in "M'Call's Magazine" .writes about tho trials ,of wash-ing-day wit-h- a sympathy that should bring te.ars to the eyes of tho average'housekeeper. , Tho more-I seo of woman's struggles with thu l domestic problems, tho moro convinVed am'Ttbat, next to tho thrice-daily'.mesil in tho importance it takes in housekeepers' minds/ is t-h'o weekly wash-day. ,T;wp days out of every .seven are chiefly, given -over, in nfbst households, to tho washing-anil ironing of houseJinens and personal apparoh' ; . Arid in this countrv, 'where tho wceKiy'-Wafch is : a practically, universal 1 habit', there-is some-thing-about its .-recurrence no lesi'relentless thin the recurrence of. meal-timos:ln some countries', a semi-annual washing seems to sufliae. In our country, a single washday skipped is' almost- certain to .cause discomfort. Have you. over—you housekeepershad your.; laundress disappoint yciu, and thought to let the washing accumulate for another week?. And if you. did let it go, was thoro a day of tho intervening .week in. whioh • each member of your family did not plaintively enquire for somo—apparently—most necessary article of apparal-and loudly grieve .when told-he couldn t havo. it?.. , - I suppose- as many tempers, aro. damaged every week by laundry delinquencies anddisasters as by-- any other ono thing in the housekeeping realm. And yet laundry skill is usually tho very least of all a new.housekeeper's. equipment for her liiidortnking. Few girls get any practical experience in laundry work, and there is so littlo written about it and said about it—compared with cooking and sewing- arid other domestic arts—that ono almost imagino-fmo laundering to bo. a thing that _comes naturally to-.anybno who undertakes' it, by-instinct, as'it-wore. ' How bitterly-untrue this is,- most housewives must-learn by sad experience. There ought to bo a course in fine laundry arts included in every -girl's education. Sho may never need to perform the actual heavy labour of a .day 's washing, but sho- will bo thankful,, every week of her life, for a knowledge of the principles cf expert laundering; .sho will need to teach those principles many times, andv-sho will need-to exercise them constantly in tho supervision of \ivork dono in her honio laundry; ■ Not ono domestic servant in a thousand is a thoroughly skilled laundress, but a great majority of tlie'm are teach'ablo and ,witli patient direction can . be mado.-to- apply -their strength,- under their' mistress's direction,, to beautiful results.., Have| you ever felt frco to wear as many clean clothes as you wanted .to? I haven't. In most households tho work. is. so arranged that not more than two days- of each .week can conveniently be given to .- tho. washing and ironing. The other days havo other duties, and an excessive wash means a' disarrangement of the. whole week. You .know, and I know, about how, much work our. cook or our laundress, or whoever washes for us, is ablo-to gefithrough with in tho ordinary tiiiio, and'tro are constantly mindful that wo. must try ;to keep within those, bounds. If Constance-must have her fanciest white dress in .the. wash .011 account of a party, we try 1 to. .ecoiipjriiso ; on. white, petticoats., or shirt waists; if.,there 'is.a guest, to add to the laundry labours, we aro careful not to take down tho sitting-room curtains to bo "dono up" that samo week; and so on. . .Now, thoro are labour-saving ways- and de-vices'-in.laundry work which every housewife ought to know. It would t-ako many articles to eniitnerato thoin all, but I want to inako mention of ono in particular—tho domestic mangle. . There tinio when I considered the I manglo the sign -manual of shiftlessness. ' I iiad never secn- oue, but I had my ideas on tho subject. Thero was, too, a tiriio when gfandmother- thought tho same of a sew-. 11%-ma'chine. Sho had. -the notion which many of tho hard-working house-mistresses of an older day. had, that any kind of lab-our-sa\ ing device savoured of demoralisation. I often see—and fee!—evidences of tho survival of this notion, evcii to this day. If wo have always dono a tiling in a labourlous, slow .way, wo ihefct with suspicion any suggestion about a quick, easy way .'to accomplish the sinie ends. This is singularly true of women and untruo of men. lien ai'o constantly on tho -lookout for labour-saving methods in their businesses; women, whose work, is never done," have a wqy of going ?^ C ii it, unsparing of .themselves until they tire out-, ificn t-hoy grofr. careJess and let things tako care of i themselves in any naphnzard fashion. What wo should do, is to keep ambition and energy always at par by. using them judiciously and saving any unnecessary tax on them.' Mangling is a process associated in many women s , minds solely with steam laundries and all Uioir abominations. As a matter of tact, mangles wore primarily a domestic institution and had nothing whatever to do with steam or any other form of heat. Housewives of long ago, who knew all tho arts of fabric manufacture, put their precious homespun and home-bleached linens through a mangle-bed for smoothing and glossing because they understood how much better-for tho-presui vation of the fibre was great pressure -than such great heat as would tend to equal smoothness.

Do you know what gives your tablo linens their beautiful satin gloss when they aro fresh from the shop? ■ It is a machine called a calender,, f.-liich is precisely a largo rnanglo •—nothing moro or less. Vou know what hours of standing, of heavy pressure with only moderately hot irons applied to a very damp silrfacu; are required to givo the lionielauhdered cloth or-napkin anything like that pristine iinish. \ou know how seldom, if ever, in the hurry of the single weekly ironing day, they get it, or anything tike it.

Hero, then, is onp practical laundry suggestip a which I offer out of my own'' receuJ knowledge. With tho largo aiid small flat pieces, out of tho way in Half or less than half tho usual time and better done than usual, the laundress may go at tho "fussy" ironing, v/ith vigour, aiid you and I need •not feel so criminal if wo burden her with an extra white duck skirt or/lingerie petticoat.