As a devotee of machine washing, today has been hard

[mrsflibble]

I have spent nearly 2 hours getting half a normal load of washing clean and wrung out enough to go on the lin. for some reason my washer has stopped emptying, and i can't find the pump valve to take it apart and have a look so i will leave that lovely job to my hubby.

I washed a load of pants and socks so he can have clean ones for the rest of his working week, and then spun them in a salad spinner a few pieces at a time so they wern't sopping wet when i hung them out. thank goodness for my ipod is all i can say, it's keeping me sane today.

[Flo]

You'd not have been happy with a washing copper and mangle like wot mother had then would you?

[Rosendula]

When I've done hand washing in the past I've done the wringing around poles. If you have a parasol up in the garden, that's ideal. Just put the item around the pole (don't wrap it round and round, just put it around the back of it), then put the ends together and twist them. Keep twisting until it's tight around the post. Erm, that's it. It gets a lot more water out for me than wringing by hand.

[Annpan]

I used to do my washing in a bath. All the dirty washing went in, bare feet, trousers rolled up as hot water as I could stand and some washing powder and stamp for about 30 mins, then 2 rinses, then everything got wrung by hand and put out on the line. In this heat you can still dry things in a day easily.

If you have a small amount of washing that you want to dry quicker, get a dry towel and lay your wet, hand wrung, garment on the towel and roll the towel up then wring again, or stamp on it unroll and your garment will be dryer than from your average spin cycle. This works great for delicate items.

[mrsflibble]

ta for the tips peeps. he got the pipe off and found a filter in it which we never knew was there; and the moral of this story is if a second hand electroics shop tells you their machines are fully refurbished, don't believe them. if it had been, the filter wouldn't have had so much crap in it which we dont recognise.

5 buttons (one i recognise)
10p in change (5p, and 5 1p)
a simcard (we only have two in the house, and theyre in our phones so this must have come with the machine lol!)
some unidentifiable plastic chunks
a security tag label thingummy
lots of fluff.

thankfully though our washer is easier to fix than our old one and it's very easy to get in at the filter pump, but you need big hairy engineer manstrength to get the clips off the pipes lol!

[Stonehead]

Doing the laundry in the Ukraine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zau3TRILvTQ
Having done it the same way, I can say a wash stand makes a big difference to your back. A wash stand brings the basin up to such a height that the top of the wash board tucks into the bottom of your rib cage.

And from Nicaragua:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2g8djPKV0

My grandfather's house in Australia had a similar three-sink setup. You'd put soapy water in the middle one, soak the clothing in that and then lift the items onto the washboard to scrub them. That way, little of the dirt fell in the soapy water, which meant you had to change it less frequently. The third sink was for the first rinse water.

As each item was washed, it was dropped in the rinse water and left. When everything had been scrubbed, the soapy water would be let out and replaced with clean water. Then each item in turn would be agitated hard in the initial rinse water, wrung out (or mangled), and then rinsed in the second lot of rinse water before being rung out (or mangled) again.

And if you think that sounds like hard work, the laundry we had at the back of the house in Queensland was even worse. Temperatures there would rise well into the 30s, with 95% humidity, so it was already like being in a sauna. On laundry day, my Mum would fire up the massive copper and boil the washing amidst huge amounts of steam. Then everything was scrubbed as described, rinsed and mangled. It should be brought back in as a form of weight loss treatment!

[ina]

When my parents built their house in 1962, it must have been one of the last to have a proper copper installed in the basement - wood fired, I believe (or coal). We didn't get a washing machine until quite a bit later.

Guess why we were all potty trained at 18 months at the latest...