How did they wash clothes?
Washing the clothes was probably the hardest chore of the week. First, bucket after bucket of water had to be brought in from the spring or the well to fill a big iron pot on the cook stove. A large supply of wood had to be chopped and ready in the wood box to keep the fire going in the stove, because the water needed to be heated and kept boiling during the washing. The white things would be washed first, then the colored things, so that the dyes in the colored clothes would not spoil the white ones. The clothes were scrubbed by hand on a ribbed scrubbing board in the washtub with strong homemade soap. After the clothes were scrubbed, they were boiled for about half an hour and stirred constantly with a long stick. They were then lifted out of the hot, soapy water with the stick into another tub, and the water was squeezed out. When all the clothes were washed, the wash water was dumped outside. More buckets of fresh water were hauled into heat on the stove for rinsing the clothes. Wh
