These old clothes washing machines are lined up along a fenceline on Hawthorne Road out on the reservation. I’ve driven past them several times in the past few days and finally decided to take a couple of pictures. I think most of these date back to the 1940’s and 1950’s. I remember my mother doing the wash with a machine like the middle machine on the left when I was a youngster in the early 1950’s.

Monday was wash day back then. It definitely took the whole day. A load would be washed, put through the ringer into a rinse tub, swished around, put through the ringer again into a different rinse tub, and finally through the ringer a third time into a clothes basket.

The clothes were then hung on the clothes line either in the backyard or in the basement depending on the weather outside. A new load was started in the washer to run while hanging the clothes on the line.

Wednesday was ironing day. Sometimes mother would be able to start the ironing on Tuesday afternoon, but most of it was done on Wednesday. I remember when they bought an ironing machine which was a smaller version of the machines I see in commercial laundries today. I’m sure that ironing machine cut the ironing time in half. Even with that, almost everything that got washed (except for undergarments) probably had to be ironed, unlike the clothes and fabrics used today.

Seeing these old washing machines was kind of a stroll down memory lane.