Old Wash Day Recipe
Variations of this ‘recipe’ handed down from a grandmother to her granddaughter on her wedding day has circulated around the net for years. Snopes declares this was making rounds well before the internet as “xeroxlore”.
Whether it truly written by a grandmother to her granddaughter we’ll probably never know. But it is quite charming :).
Wash Day Recipe
- Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water.
- Set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert.
- Shave one hole cake of lie soap in boilin water.
- Sort things, make 3 piles. 1 pile white, 1 pile colored, 1 pile work britches and rags.
- To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth, then thin down with boilin water.
- Take white things, rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard, and then boil. Rub colored, don’t boil, just rinse and starch.
- Take things out of kettle with broomstick handle, then rinse, and starch.
- Hang old rags on fence.
- Spread tea towels on grass.
- Pore rinse water in flower bed.
- Scrub porch with hot soapy water.
- Turn tubs upside down.
- Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, sit and rock a spell and count your blessings.
Paste this over your washer and dryer. Next time when you think things are bleak, read it again, kiss that washing machine and dryer, and give thanks.
First thing each morning you should run and hug your washer and dryer, also your toilet — those two-holers used to get Mighty Cold!
*Typos from original
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Posted in Reference & Notes | 
( 3 )
18 Aug 2007 at 7:06 pm
It wasn’t all that long ago I remember throwing the rinse water in with the plants and scrubbing the porch and the outhouse with the hot soapy water. The tea towels did get laid on the grass to get bleached by the sun. We hung the tubs on the nails hammered into the walls on the back porch for that reason.
I still use the rinse water from my dishes to water my potted plants. The towels and whatever else get laid on the lawn to get bleached by the sun. Old tricks just get updated.
19 Aug 2007 at 10:51 am
I remember my grandmother taking freshly washed items and putting them through (one by one) a wringer machine of some kind to get a lot of the water out. We had to be very careful not to put our fingers near the machine while it was running (funny what you remember decades later).
I don’t recall how the items were washed, but I don’t think it was by hand. Then she line dried all the clothes.
19 Aug 2007 at 6:34 pm
I still use the final rinse water from the clothes washer to water the plants in the garden. I just collect it from the washer hose into a bucket or 2 as it drains into the sink next to the washer.
Why let the clean and (nearly) soap free water go down the drain? Clean water sustains all life on our Earth.