When home washing machines were first invented, they were just a tub on legs or wheels, with a hand-cranked mangle on top. Later there were the semi-automatics or twin tubs, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s some top loaders were manufactured. The top loaded automatics followed until the front loading automatics started to sell.  In the new housing estate where we lived in Roscommon in the early 1970, these were selling like hot-cakes.

For many mothers with big families up to the late 50’s, it must have been a terrible chore in our climate.  If you lived in a country with plenty of sunshine, drying clothes was the easy part. With six children in our family, I can remember a big saucepan on the gas cooker boiling the whites or tea towels.  Sheets and the like would be left to soak in the bath. The rest washed in the sink and wrung out by hand and dried on the clothes line in the garden, weather permitting.  A clothes-horse was often placed in front of the dying embers of the fire last thing at night.   I remember a wooden latticed structure over the range in my aunt’s house out in the country, worked by a pulley, for drying clothes.  Later launderettes appeared and they must have been a Godsend as they washed and dried the clothes.

 

When we first got married and lived in Roscommon, my washing routine was the same as my mothers.  5 years later and with 2 children, one in its first year, nappies were soaked in a bucket of water containing Napisan. I had a big saucepan for the whites.  No Marigolds either.

 

One day I was presented with a mangle by my mother in law.  The only time I’d seen one of those contraptions, was gathering dust in a shed on a relative’s farm.  I thought I was going to laugh.  It was a steel structure with rollers on top and a wooden platform to hold a bucket or basin.  You put the clothes through the ringer or rollers while rotating a handle on the side, and the surplus water was caught underneath in the bucket.  This was after washing them of course.  Well, I did use it and I have to admit it was great, especially for the nappies and towels.  It wasn’t something I would admit to having or using at the time.

 

I left it behind when we came to live in Bray in the early 80’s. It was a few years before I got a second hand twin tub.  I thought I was really coming up in the world until one day, when I switched it on, I got a belt of an electric shock.  I was a bit spoilt by then and hated going back to washing by hand.  With three children at this stage, I’d had enough.  My husband thought I’d lost my reason when I suggested we buy a new automatic.  I checked prices in the local shops. I went to the Provident on Main Street for a loan, with the promise that I would pay for it with the children’s allowance, for as long as it took.  To my surprise the deal was done.

 

When I told my husband that the machine was arriving the next day, he said ‘no way’ or words to that effect!  A brand new Bendix arrived the following morning.  After all the trepidation on my part, he plumbed it in, and even got it going with the first wash.