General Chat

thanks for this thread Anne (in wales)

Anne .... Yes good old Robin starch.

Thanks for all the above, fellow posters! Really brought back some memories for me. We may all be from different parts of the country but it seems our childhood less-mod-cons at the time is shared. I remember even having a "bath" in the kitchen sink as a toddler as it was the only place it was warm with the Aga on....

We had no water or drainage in the house. When my eldest daughter was a baby I woul put her napkins and white clothes in a "Baby Belling" boiled it on the gas stove and then took it ouside to the cold water tap to rinse it all.

Nobody has mentioned the scrubbing board ,used with the green washing soap.Or perhaps I am the only really oldie on Genes.We had a gas copper to boil the whites in and areally big mangle which was a killer to turn.Good old days my foot .Only men would say that about washday.Polly p

Pauline ....I did ......my great auntie used her wash board till she died in about 1985 ..my great uncle was very victorian and his wife kept to all the old ways ...dress code and open fires and wash days and out side loo ......they lived in a two up two down in Reading at the end of their lives ....it was like a museum........even a dish with sweets in ..............

My great uncle was 99 when he died great auntie was about 87

erm..i have a dish with sweets in...lol

I often have a dish with sweets in!!!!

PMSL...................sorry ladies ........we dont they go to quick ..before I get the dish out!!!!

lol, i found a lovely old dish with a handle at a car boot sale so it became the sweetie dish

Posh lot ,no sweet dish for us we had an old toffee tin.Pauline

Mum did hers on a Monday in a copper boiler in the 1950's when we lived in a prefab. Then through the mangle. Remember coming home from school in the winter and the washing being frozen solid on the line.

When we moved into a "proper house" she got the tin tub. Do you remember how black the water would be after the final wash (Dads work clothes)?.

She still had the twin tub when I was in my early twenties. Hadn't let her wash my jumpers for years because the spin was so fast everything went out of shape.

To this day she still does her wash on a Monday.

Not like me .....Monday,Tuesday, Wednesday etc. and the washing basket is never empty.

As a matter of interest. Does anyone else have about three things at the bottom of the basket that never get washed? I'm going to throw mine out tomorrow.

Oh I remember the rubbing board and we also had a Posser which you used to agitate the clothes. The posser for those that don't know was a long handle with a black Rubber Posser on the end looked like a large version of a Sink Unplugger.
My son was born in the sixties and I had a Baby Birco Boiler to boil all his nappies in. No fancy throw away ones them days.
Nothing nicer than seeing all those lovely white nappies on the line. Also all the sheets were white Cotton in those days and also had to be boiled. Took nearly all day to do the washing.
To be truthful that's something I don't miss all that hard work
Regards
Jackie