I know you will not believe this, but there was a time when there were not Kleenex! Worse then that, there was a time when there was an ironing board in every home and an iron in every plug in. Before that there were pieces of iron which were shaped in a rather triangular manner and placed on the wood stove to be heated to use in the chore of getting wrinkles out of clothes and other household items. The clothes and other household items were first washed in a washing machine (God I love the way we used to name stuff for what it was used for in the home!) The clothes were then hung on the (get this!) clothes line to dry. When they were dry the ones we did not want to have wrinkles in, were sprinkled. It was called sprinkling because we put water in a "sprinkling bottle" which had a top on it with tiny holes to let out tiny sprinkles of water. See, when the clothes dried with wrinkles in them, they had to be dampened and ironed on the special board (hence the term "ironing board).
A little aside here, back in the days that this went on a woman was judged by how white her whites were and the uniformity of how her clothes were hung on the line to dry. There were 2 kinds of clothes pins which held the clothes on the line. They were both wooden. One type had a spring and it pinched open, was placed over the item on the line, and then released to hold the item in place. The other was also wooden but just slid down over the item. It was best if you had only one kind, because that is just how it was. A drop of "bluing" was put in the second rinse water to make the whites appear a brighter white. We even had sets of tea towels which were used for drying of the dishes back then. (These also required being ironed.) That was way before automatic dish washers. The tea towels were embroidered in one corner to denote what should be done that day. As I recall, the litany was:
"Monday, wash day,"
"Tuesday Iron day",
"Wednesday Mending Day",
"Thursday Shopping Day",
"Friday Cleaning Day",
"Saturday Baking Day,"
"Sunday Worship Day".
And the world pretty well turned on that unless there was a death or something else equally catastrophic. Iron day was always special.
Mother would sprinkle the clothes the night before, usually. Then when she got home in the evening the ironing would commence. First was baby clothes, then little girl clothes, then boy clothes, men clothes and household things that needed ironed. But what was really special was the little ball in the corner of the sprinkled clothes. That was for which ever one of us that had been the best and begged the hardest. It was the handkerchiefs! Since there was no such thing as Kleenex, when we needed our nose "blown" mother would whip the handkerchief out of her pocket and pinch it over our nose and tell us to "blow." ( A little aside here. I was always hoping I was the first to use that particular handkerchief as I did not want to have my nose any where near where someone else had undergone the ritual of nose blowing".
But there seemed to be magic in the ironing of the handkerchief. They had to be square and have no wrinkles. Most of them were women's "hankies" because men mostly blew their nose into the air and pinched it off. Gross, grosser, grossest comes to mind. Women's hankies usually had a hand crocheted edge. They were also of thinner fabric. Each one of us girls took pride in the handkerchief ironing, because we were preparing for the day when we would be the lady of our own home and have our very own iron and ironing board. Back in those days everything was preparatory to the day we would marry a wonderful man and spend our day making him happy and keeping his home. So it was always with great pride that I presented my freshly ironed handkerchiefs to mother and waited until she inspected each one and told me to put them in the "handkerchief drawer." My life at that point had meaning! Ah, but time marches on now doesn't it?
Today we have a washer and special liquid soap designed to remove stains, followed by fabric softener to remove wrinkles in the dryer along with removing static cling. The iron is downstairs, or in a cupboard some where and it really is not needed if you get the clothes out of the dryer in a timely manner. This did not happen overnight. As I recall, I tried to get my girls interested in the fine art of ironing and they thought I was nuts. As for handkerchiefs, those are replaced by Kleenex that are disposable. And why on earth would we want to reuse a hanky when Kleenex goes in the trash and is added to one of the 697,000,000,000 + piles of trash floating around in our sweet earth today?
I long for the good old days when we actually used stuff that made sense and called it by the name it was used for at the time of use. So many things in my kitchen are now obsolete, ironing board just being one. My mangle is a collectors item. Where are all the rolling pins? Potato peelers? Lemon juicer? Sausage stuffer?
Maybe I am the one that has outlived my usefulness? Ya' thnk?
A little aside here, back in the days that this went on a woman was judged by how white her whites were and the uniformity of how her clothes were hung on the line to dry. There were 2 kinds of clothes pins which held the clothes on the line. They were both wooden. One type had a spring and it pinched open, was placed over the item on the line, and then released to hold the item in place. The other was also wooden but just slid down over the item. It was best if you had only one kind, because that is just how it was. A drop of "bluing" was put in the second rinse water to make the whites appear a brighter white. We even had sets of tea towels which were used for drying of the dishes back then. (These also required being ironed.) That was way before automatic dish washers. The tea towels were embroidered in one corner to denote what should be done that day. As I recall, the litany was:
"Monday, wash day,"
"Tuesday Iron day",
"Wednesday Mending Day",
"Thursday Shopping Day",
"Friday Cleaning Day",
"Saturday Baking Day,"
"Sunday Worship Day".
And the world pretty well turned on that unless there was a death or something else equally catastrophic. Iron day was always special.
Mother would sprinkle the clothes the night before, usually. Then when she got home in the evening the ironing would commence. First was baby clothes, then little girl clothes, then boy clothes, men clothes and household things that needed ironed. But what was really special was the little ball in the corner of the sprinkled clothes. That was for which ever one of us that had been the best and begged the hardest. It was the handkerchiefs! Since there was no such thing as Kleenex, when we needed our nose "blown" mother would whip the handkerchief out of her pocket and pinch it over our nose and tell us to "blow." ( A little aside here. I was always hoping I was the first to use that particular handkerchief as I did not want to have my nose any where near where someone else had undergone the ritual of nose blowing".
But there seemed to be magic in the ironing of the handkerchief. They had to be square and have no wrinkles. Most of them were women's "hankies" because men mostly blew their nose into the air and pinched it off. Gross, grosser, grossest comes to mind. Women's hankies usually had a hand crocheted edge. They were also of thinner fabric. Each one of us girls took pride in the handkerchief ironing, because we were preparing for the day when we would be the lady of our own home and have our very own iron and ironing board. Back in those days everything was preparatory to the day we would marry a wonderful man and spend our day making him happy and keeping his home. So it was always with great pride that I presented my freshly ironed handkerchiefs to mother and waited until she inspected each one and told me to put them in the "handkerchief drawer." My life at that point had meaning! Ah, but time marches on now doesn't it?
Today we have a washer and special liquid soap designed to remove stains, followed by fabric softener to remove wrinkles in the dryer along with removing static cling. The iron is downstairs, or in a cupboard some where and it really is not needed if you get the clothes out of the dryer in a timely manner. This did not happen overnight. As I recall, I tried to get my girls interested in the fine art of ironing and they thought I was nuts. As for handkerchiefs, those are replaced by Kleenex that are disposable. And why on earth would we want to reuse a hanky when Kleenex goes in the trash and is added to one of the 697,000,000,000 + piles of trash floating around in our sweet earth today?
I long for the good old days when we actually used stuff that made sense and called it by the name it was used for at the time of use. So many things in my kitchen are now obsolete, ironing board just being one. My mangle is a collectors item. Where are all the rolling pins? Potato peelers? Lemon juicer? Sausage stuffer?
Maybe I am the one that has outlived my usefulness? Ya' thnk?
