I remember the days when we used a big black 3-legged wash pot over an open fire to wash clothes. If there's anything I learned and remember best, is how to get and keep white clothes clean and the whitest possible.
Of course, with today's seemingly unlimited types of man-made fibers and exotic fabrics, boiling them might just cause them to be totally unusable at all. So this tip is for white cotton linens, towels and wash clothes and even men's or women's white cotton long or short sleeved blouses and shirts including T-Shirts.
A big white enamel pot works best on your kitchen stove, but I'm sure stainless steel would work just as well.
Add about 3 Tablespoons of laundry soap and the same amount of baking soda, the clothing and fill the pot with clean cold water. If there were stains on the fabric, they should have been treated first individually, but then just boil the clothes for at least half an hour. Keep them punched down so that the water covers them, and boil gently. Allow to cool, wring them out and toss them into the washing machine to rinse and spin out, then dry as usual.
One other little trick is to treat whites with sunlight. There is still nothing as good as Old Father Sun for bleaching out white clothing to their whitest. My Mother often would put a sheet down on the ground, and then the shirt or whatever else she was drying and allow it to dry right there on the ground.
I can remember my snow-white pinafores and her aprons carefully dried, then ironed to pristine perfection. I can't tell you how long it's been since I even saw someone ironing. Most of our clothing today is "Wash & Wear" and while I am enjoying the freedom, I do miss the beauty of lovely white crisp blouses, tea-towels and bed linens.
This sounds old-fashioned, I realize, but once in a while, we run across things which are just better done the old-fashioned way if we want good old-fashioned results.
Happy Day to Everyone
By Pookarina /Julia from Boca Raton, FL
I just want to thank PupperMom, Megan8 and Lanky Liz for sharing their experiences with wash day tips. I was also happy to see that I'm not the only one who resorts to some of the old-fashioned ways of getting our white clothes white as well as really enjoying some of the benefits of accomplishing that in the same ways I do.
I also graduated from the big, black 3-legged cast iron wash pot over an open fire to the wringer type Maytag washer and using double tubs for rinsing. My children loved to play in those tubs of water after all the clothes were done, and I still have some pictures to prove it.
I was another one of those moms using birdseye or curity diapers which had to be washed and boiled every day along with gowns, little shirts and dresses. I took such pride in hanging all the various garments as well as the diapers all together. Each gown hung alongside all the other gowns, and each little diaper shirt with all the other little shirts, all socks together, and of course, the lines full of snowy white diapers all in a row. I think mothers had a kind of competition going on back then to see that their laundry looked as good as or better than any other mother's. Above all, every bib had to be perfectly clean...no stains anywhere or back in the pot it went.
I feel sorry sometimes for all the mothers today who really don't have the time to do laundry the way we did it back then. It may be a lot easier today to just toss everything into a washing machine, then a dryer, but they miss a lot too.
When I was growing up, I helped my mother with everything and all the time I was helping, I was learning. I have thought a million times or more how fortunate I was to have a mother who was always at home, cooking, cleaning, and teaching my sister and me all the ways to do things easier and better.
Those of us who are lucky enough to have had a stay-at-home mom were without a doubt the luckiest children in the world. Even when I do things today using all the new appliances and easier-quicker prepared foods, I'm so glad that I could do it just as well the old-fashioned way, and would expect the end result to be even better.
I taught my 3 daughters and one son all the old -fashioned ways...just in case they ever got caught and had to do them that way. Several times, they've come to me and thanked me for teaching them those things which they have had to use more than once already.
Wash days to me were also fun days. That was the day the back porch had everything moved off it and the wooden floors and steps scrubbed with a broom and the water from the washing machine. Now, how many people ever did that?
They were such simple pleasures,but more fun that sitting in front of a TV or a computer clicking on game things. We had radio programs to look forward to though, but all the chores came first. I hope I'm not so old that I'm the only one who remembers all these related things for wash day.
Thank you all for the lovely feedback. Julia in Boca Raton...proud mother of Sir Catty Kit
This is a page about cleaning whites without bleach. If you choose to not use bleach for your whites there are other options for getting them clean and white.
Even if you use bleach, sometimes your whites are dingy and gray after washing. This is a page about whites not looking white after washing.
