Washing Machines I have Known and Loved

I currently have a washing machine that almost needs a licence to drive it.  This machine communicates with sound and text messages.  For example when its load gets out of kilter it stops and Cheeps – yes Cheeps – like a wounded baby bird until I come to read its pathetic cry for help.  “Help me.  My load is out of balance.  Please reposition my load. Then press start.”

At another time after three warnings it refuses to wash until I have run its self-cleaning program - required after 100 washes it tells me.  Sounds simple Eh??  NO!!!  this thing has about 30 different cycles and the self-cleaning cycle direction is buried under two different menus.  It took me a week to figure out how to access that one while the washing piled up.

If I want to wash a doona it wants to know if it is synthetic or feather.  How do I know what the thing considers to be bulky items?  Blankets have a different cycle – again synthetic or wool??  Are towels considered bulky??  Are they colour fast??  Are they heavily soiled?? What needs hot water and what needs cold?

Nine times out of ten after puzzling over the options I give up and just press regular.  But there again it wants to know if I want it to add softener and have fast spin.

I’m expecting any day to get a text message on my phone from Willemena the Washing Machine saying “you never talk to me these days.  You rarely visit and after I’ve given you the best years of my life!  CHEEP!!!” 

Well I really shouldn’t be so critical of Willemena; given the history of washing machines I’ve had and at times not had over the years.

My first experience of washing was in the fifties when my mother and my Aunty would do the washing for our extended family of eight.  In those days it was necessary to set a full day aside for the washing.  They had a huge wood-fed boiling copper in the corner and double concrete tubs and well as wringer machine. Sheets and other whites were boiled in the copper and hot water from the copper was used in the washing machine. The sheets and the clothes were transferred through the wringer into the 1^st tub of cold water and again through the wringer into the second tub and finally through the wringer into the washing basket and then taken out and hung on the long clotheslines which were then held up high by a large wooded prop.

When the clothes were dry they would be brought in and then dampened down using an old sauce bottle full of water with a rubber stopper with holes in so the water could be sprinkled over the clothes which were then rolled up and left to be ironed the next day.  This obviously took all day to do. I could never understand why they would get the clothes dry on the line and then wet them again.  This was done of course to make ironing the creases out easier because there were few synthetics in those days and no steam irons. When I was 12 we moved to a new house and Mum had a front loading semi-automatic washing machine which cut the work enormously.  

Then I got married and the first few places we lived in we shared a laundry with others who had washing machines.  Again the wringer type - so triple handling.  When we moved into our first house we had no washing machine. Just an electric copper and two cement tubs and an empty space where a washing machine didn’t sit.  So I boiled up the whites and hand washed the coloureds.  One day just after I had bought new white Jokey Y undies for ES 2yr old and R, I was boiling them in the copper and unbeknownst to me a red rag fell into the copper and all the undies turned pink.  What a disaster as ‘real men’ no matter how old they were didn’t wear pink!!

Eventually we bought a second hand semi-automatic washing machine. Oh joy.  No more hand washing.  However I soon found out why the previous owners had traded it for a new machine.  The opening at the top was about 12 inches square and lined in black rubber which had begun to perish so you had to carefully pull the clothes out just from the centre or risk getting black goo on everything. That wasn’t the worst problem however.  The machine was meant to be bolted to the floor but the laundry floor was cement so the machine just sat on the floor. UNTIL it was time for its spin cycle. THEN it would rock and roll all around the laundry floor, at times it seemed, trying to get into the kitchen.  So I took to sitting on the thing when it was spinning. Many a visitor was startled to bemused laughter when invited in by a laughing woman perched on a washing machine that was doing its herky-jerky dance on the spot to the tune of a rumbling and tumbling noisy rhythm.

Eventually I began to dream of getting a hoover twin tub.  My sister-in-law had one of these.  She the incredibly organized, 4 kids-under-three, mother. She swore by the Hoover. One day I was at David Jones and came across a twin tub.  I took the step of asking the salesman how much and did they do time-payment.  This was before credit cards. He said yes they did and worked out the payments at 12shillings and six pence a week  [about a $1:25].  I thought I could just about manage this from the child endowment and we signed up.  Next week I waited with baited breath for the delivery. I had the laundry sparkling clean and ready.  Eventually a knock on the door and huge man-mountain checked I was me and went to get the machine.  I asked him if he need any help as he was alone “No lady I can carry it” and he did!  In his arms like a baby, up the back steps and deposited it in the corner. I was so impressed.

This machine required moving things from the washing well to the spinning well and hosing it several times to rinse, then a final spin.  So labour and time was still involved with washing.  Eventually a neighbour got the first fully automatic washing machine in the neighbourhood.  As we all helped one another out when things broke down we all wished for the day when our twin tubs  broke and we could try out the new machine.

Then I finally got my own German brand fully automatic machine.  It was so simple to use. Put in the clothes add some washing powder to them spin the dial to the correct cycle push the dial in and leave it. Heaven!!  This machine worked like a dream for 17 years.  It came through two house moves with flying colours and I thought it would last forever.  Then on the last move when I plugged it in it sadly gave up the ghost. 

So now I have Willemena. And although I have joked about her here I have to say I will always always appreciate the luxury of an automatic washing machine. The amount of actual labour time to do a load including gathering the clothes and pegging them out is about 10 minutes. This means I could do the wash my mother and aunty did when I was a little girl in about an hour and a half.  But it also means I can do a load every day if I wish because I don’t have to heat up the copper and drag out the machine etc etc.   So viva labour saving technology. But I don’t think I would appreciate Willemena as much without the history of washing that I have. 

If you have a funny washing story please share it in a comment.