This weeks blog is about a topic that is as equally thrilling as it is riveting - laundry! YEAH! I can almost imagine you all transfixed to the screen, eager to read on about the worlds most boring topic! My apologies, I was laying in bed last night and for some reason I couldn't get the theme of laundering out of my head. My brain cells haven't frozen solid nor gone walkabout, I promise. I just felt like talking about laundry and other random things because this blog has been dedicated lately to my whinging and I wanted to put forth some more informative topics.

So do grab a coffee, kick back and read on.....or not.

I think the topic of laundry for me stems from the fact that I collect antique and vintage clothing and I'm always thinking about how to get things clean. Plus I have the worlds ugliest laundry room, I really really do. Now some might think "why would the crazy woman want a nice laundry room?" but honestly, when you think about how many hours we dedicate to doing laundry, wouldn't it be nice to take on the task in a space that was functional, efficient and visually pleasing?

But before I go forth into the topic, let me go back to the start - to my first memories of laundry and share some tales of the bygone years because we've all got to start somewhere when it comes to chores and things that we learn as we grow up.

My earliest memories of laundry start with my darling Mum - someone who takes laundering VERY SERIOUSLY!! This woman was raised in the generation where perfection was expected of women when it comes to domestic chores, nothing was to be done half heartedly, it was all about showing off your domestic skills because it was looked upon favorably to be a little Suzie Homemaker. The better skills you had, the better chance of nabbing a suitable husband. My poor Mum - I'm cringing a little at the thought of that.

The house we grew up in, well it is rather old and I do believe it was originally the cottage of a blacksmith. I'm not sure how old it is now and I'll have to check and confirm data but I think it was built in the late 1800s, before plumbing and laundry rooms. What I do know is that it sure was a precious little place with the most heinous decor, old grog bottles under the kitchen floor and the laundry room was in a lean to shed out the back which housed a few litters of kittens before the washing machine was moved inside....into the bathroom.........which was in the kitchen! Yep, you read that correctly. The bathroom was in the kitchen which some will find odd but as a child, it was quite exciting. Now just to clarify, the actual toilet was not in there, that was out the back in it's own structure which in Australia is fondly known as "the dunny" or "thunder box" and yes, ours was a true blue, fair dinkum outside dunny. But more about that later.

My Mum is my hero for dealing with the appliances she had to use 35 years ago and I recall the washing machine as a single unit with two compartments, one side for the washing and then the other side for the rinsing. So you had to pop the washing in, wait for one cycle to get done and then move it all into the next side to rinse and spin. Then when that was done, into the basket to be hauled outside to the washing line to dry. I must ask Mum how long this process took and do admire her dedication to the task considering she had to launder clothing for herself, 3 daughters and a husband who did gold mining for a living.

Now before I move onto the next step, I just need to describe our bathroom in slight detail because it is a fond memory and created family lore which you have to admit, thats quite extraordinary for such a humble household space. The bathroom consisted of the washing machine, a sink with window above it, a bathtub. That is all. No shower. And the walls of the bathroom did not quite reach the ceiling since it was an afterthought addition, put in there at some stage when some poor soul got sick of washing themselves in a galvanized metal tub. So this created much shenanigans for us children who had to take a bath in turns of a morning and of course being the youngest - guess who got the last bath? Poor poor me. Because of course it was not done to re-run fresh water each time, we had to share the water and if the water was a bit cold, I was allowed to add a little hot water so I'd not freeze to death.

The water to the house was piped up from the river and if there happened to be a dry season with water restrictions or a broken pipe, then we'd just go wash in the river across the road. But while we had water in the house, we'd bathe each morning and one of the greatest highlights was the fact that since the walls didn't reach the ceiling, we could easily climb up on the chest freezer in the kitchen and tip cold water from a jug over the person who happened to be in the tub at the time. Needless to say, this yielded much spankings but it was SO worth it.

And family lore - well, that is a story that my sisters bicker about to this day - the great tale of the "mystery poo" - apparently I got into the tub one morning and there was a big brown floating log in there (which Mum claims it was too big for me to have produced) - now since Middle Sister was the last one in there, she got the blame and yet to this day disputes that she was at fault, that Eldest Sister had "dropped it off" and that she did not notice it whilst she was in there. Now how someone could not notice a big floating turd is beyond me but even now, 37 years later, the debate rages on. All I care about is that I was not the guilty party!!! My bathtub time aside from that was always a fun experience, playing with mermaid toys and sponges and rinsing my hair with a Strawberry Shortcake mug and I confess this, when I spied a Strawberry Shortcake mug a few years ago in a store, I just had to buy it for nostalgic reasons and use it now to rinse my mouth out after brushing teeth.

So thats the bathing thing taken care of - lets quickly run through the history of the dunny before we resume laundry chat.

Our dunny was pretty modest and humble - a tiny shack with wooden door that was a few meters away from the house towards the back of the property. In the Spring and Summer, it would be covered in a mass of honeysuckle which I consider now, natures deodorizer. For years it was not wired with electric so we had to grab a flashlight (aka torch) to get the job done at night. But when the day came that it finally got electric, well we felt like millionaires! Now Dad could sit in there and read the paper with a bit of good light which was not real helpful since he could be in there for hours! The trick we developed for this was to just hop the fence into the neighbors yard and use their outside dunny and we could only hope that it had toilet paper since it was a holiday home for a family who only came up a few times a year.

Memories of the dunny - Mum painting it and making it look real nice and then Elder Sister thought she'd be a smart arse and hand draw a visitors book on the wall. Accidentally walking in on my Uncle in the dunny which supplied my first view of "mens junk". Catching lizards with my sister outside the dunny and writing numbers on their backs so we could race them. And of course the spiders - ranging from the giant huntsmans to the small lethal buggers. That had to have been my least favorite part of the experience and explains my phobia of spiders to this day.

Last time I went back to the home town was in 1999 and I visited my childhood home, owned by one of the town locals who was kind enough to let me visit for a little bit and it was with great sadness that I saw she'd updated the house by undertaking major renovations - I don't blame her and it was well done but the crazy bathroom in the kitchen was gone and in place was a much more practical bathroom and latrine which meant the good old thunder box from my youth was only a memory. Funny how I was so eager to leave home at age 18 and live in places with indoor toilets and actual showers but now, I miss that weird place with it's unusual features. Ah well - those memories will always remain.

Well, back to the topic of laundry. Have you noticed the topic that I feared would be very boring got replaced with stories of toilets and bathrooms? That was just a distraction folks! Now it's time to get back to the nitty gritty. Which goes back to my Mum doing her second step of laundry which involved taking it to the washing line. We had an old Hills Hoist line which was the square shape on a pole that spun around and had a lever to lower it or make it go up. A very typical Australian line and one I miss dearly. Memories of this line and I'm sure many can relate, getting "hung" on the line by the feral elder sisters - I'd love to hear if anyone else ever got subjected to that kind of childhood torture! And of course the day I'd come home to find a bunch of headless chickens hanging on the line to drain - my Mum at some stage thought how lovely it would be to raise chickens and named them after members of the town that we all adored. We looked after these "chooks" and collected their eggs and fed them and talked to them....so when the day came that Mum decided they would be better off as food in our bellies, well it was a horrifying and sad day indeed and I do recall refusing to eat the meat, being a firm believer that chicken breast should only come from a plastic covered styrofoam tray from the supermarket.

Thats a visual I'll never forget - her spinning the chookies around on the line to drain their blood faster and yet I still oddly want a Hills Hoist laundry line. Go figure.

Moving on from the gruesome and back to the laundry - now my Mum has always been a stickler for doing things just so and one of her quirks is clothing pegs, she cant stand different color pegs and would have each garment hung with two matching colors - a blouse would have two green pegs, a pair of pants two blue pegs and so on. Which of course for us kids meant countless hours sneaking out there and switching them out just to torment her. She'd go out and find a garment with a blue peg on one side and a red peg on the other and she would just ROAR much to our amusement. Years later, I discovered she'd wised up and would purchase clothing pegs all the same color which makes life a bit easier and more logical. But she's still funny about how things are hung and whenever we go home, she will watch Scott and I hang clothing out and harp at us for it not being done "right". Which makes us laugh like lunatics and it pleases me that my husband gets to experience that part of her because it's something that makes my Mum who she is, a part of her that I love dearly.

She of the generation who ironed everything, taught me how to iron dish towels (tea towels) and yet never really taught me how to use a washing machine which made life a bit difficult when I left home at 18 years of age and had to ask someone how it was all done.

And now, many years later, I have my own quirks and habits and much to my husbands dismay, I have shown some of my mothers traits. Mine is how I fold laundry, it has to be done a certain way - folded just so and in a certain order to make my life more efficient. Since the iron and I don't catch up very often, I find that folding nearly and stacking neatly can prevent many wrinkles and thus sparing the iron from being kidnapped from it's sunbeam in the laundry room. So poor MOTH, even an offer to fold something gets shot down in flames and I've been known to refold something to my satisfaction if he gets the opportunity to grab some laundry out of my obsessive paws.

Many times I've been asked how to clean vintage and antique clothing since it's something I've been doing for a few years now - it's not something I was taught nor have I studied the craft of cleaning old textiles, it really just trial and error I guess and an instinct to know what select fabrics can withstand. Old white Edwardian cottons can take a good cleaning if they are sturdy since they were used to brutal cleaning methods and I know specialists might cringe at my methods but I found that oxi clean soakings were the best option for that type of material. Sprinkle an amount of oxi into a bucket and use however much you think a garment needs according to it's condition, run water into the bucket and make sure the oxo clean has dissolved properly and then soak the garment for a few hours, checking on occasion and making sure garment remains submerged. This is a good method for tablecloths - pretty much anything cotton. If the item is fairly sturdy and not too fragile, I'll then place it in a delicate garment bag and run through the washing machine on the delicate setting and then hang dry and let it have a very quick spin in the dryer for about 10 minutes on no heat fluff with a dryer sheet. This gets out the stank and keeps the garment from being too stiff. This method can also work with patterned and colored cottons but use the oxi sparingly as to not leech too much color from the item.

Bleach I use very sparingly as it can turn whites yellow - a tiny amount goes a long way if I think an item is not quite clean or bright enough. And it's very much not advised to use on polyester - same with the oxi clean as I learned the hard way that anything polyester will lose it's color if soaked in oxi. Live and learn I guess.

For velvets and silks and other luxury fabrics, I've found that using the Dryel home dry cleaning product is really helpful - this product can be found in the laundry aisle at the grocery store and while it is a little costly, it's cheaper than taking the items to the dry cleaners in the long term. It consists of a spray, a bag and some soaked sheets - you spray the garment all over and really squirt the heck out of stains and then let it sit for an hour or two to let the stains get soaked. Place garment in the bag and throw in one of the soaked sheets and let it go on your usual dryer setting as per instructions on the box. Hang immediately after taking out of dryer to let wrinkles drop and thats all. Some things like delicate silks I wouldn't trust too much with this method but heavy satins and such hold up fairly well - I even recently put a mohair coat through this process and was pleased with the end result. But if in doubt and you have a piece that you are keeping for personal use, a trip to the dry cleaners is worth the expense - I took a mens wool coat which was made in the early turn of the century to the dry cleaners and it only cost me about $5.00 to get it cleaned which I thought was more than reasonable since it was a specialty item. Just be sure to remove any adornments from vintage clothing such as buttons or pins, especially if they are ornate or extremely old before dry cleaning since the process can damage such things.

I hope thats been a fairly useful piece of information for you and that you can feel comfortable laundering antique or vintage textiles. If in doubt, don't. Thats the best advice I can give, especially if an item has great personal value.

Well, I think I've pretty much covered most of what was floating around in my head last night. Little nuggets of information to impart before I go off to enjoy the rest of the day........

Rumor has it that to remove blood from clothing, there is something in our DNA that can clean our own blood so apparently by hocking a loogie onto a blood stain that you've caused yourself can actually remove the stain. Not sure how accurate this is and have yet to test the theory but maybe I should, just to see if it's true. Stay tuned for that! And bear in mind that the idea of spitting on something is beyond gross to me - from my younger years, seeing people spit makes me more than nauseous. I blame the lads from my teenage years who thought it was great sport to glob out giant loads of spit - at that stage of life, I looked at the lads around me and thought my only option was to run as fast as I could and join a convent. Anyway, for you all though - I will drop a little spittle and see if I can remove a blood stain to find out if that part of science is accurate.

As for my uglier than sin laundry room, well I'm going to attempt to include a photo of it here. When we moved in, the walls were a gnarly shade of blotted pastel pink - sponged over the walls by the previous owner who was trying to cover the dark red sandy textured wall paper that the owners before them had put up. There were cabinets that ran the length of the room that were dark brown and made the room look crowded and heavy. Those were removed a few years ago, I slapped a little sea green paint on the walls and then just threw my hands up and said "screw it" and have been living with this horrible space since. But I sense a rebellion - a yearning to take this laundry room in our pig ranch and turn it into a beautiful space that will fill me with delight every time I put a load of laundry in. Because when I think about it, what a luxury for me to have such a room - compared to what my Mum had to deal with when I was a child. I'm sure she dreamt of having a nice laundry space and there is honestly no reason whatsoever for me to not have one. I know what I want it to look like, I can visually see the space in my vortex of an imagination so why not get this done? 

Well, time for me to wrap this up and attend to the chores of the day which actually do include laundry. And as the sun bathes my shitty little laundry room and the iron stares at me nervously, I shall dream of my laundry room as it hopefully will be and use the photos I took this morning as my guide.

Thanks for reading this rather lengthy blog (I'm assuming it will get read but if not, I'm okay with that) and I hope that in these last cold days of the winter, you find something to dream about whether it be renovations or improvements.

Much love to all.

Sam. xxxx

P.S. Forgot to load photo of my laundry room, the filthy little pig that it is so I'll put photo in comments on FB below this post.