• Laundry was first done in watercourses, letting the water carry away the materials which could cause stains and smells.

• Philippines [edit] A woman doing the laundry manually in Iriga, 2015 Until the early 1980s, when washing machines became more affordable in the country, much of the laundry
  work in the Philippines was done manually, and this role was generally assigned to women.

• Laundry has been part of history since humans began to wear clothes, so the methods by which different cultures have dealt with this universal human need are of interest to
  several branches of scholarship.

• This wash-house usually contained two basins – one for washing and the other for rinsing – through which the water was constantly flowing, as well as a stone lip inclined
  towards the water against which the wet laundry could be beaten.

• Laundry, like cooking and child care, is still done both at home and by commercial establishments outside the home.

• Sometimes these facilities were combined with public baths, see for example Baths and wash houses in Britain.

• Laundry symbols are included on many clothes to help consumers avoid these problems.

• [2] The word “laundry” may refer to the clothing itself, or to the place where the cleaning happens.

• These facilities were public and available to all families, and usually used by the entire village.

• Villages across Europe that could afford it built a wash-house, sometimes known by the French name of lavoir.

• Laundry work has traditionally been highly gendered, with the responsibility in most cultures falling to women (formerly known as laundresses or washerwomen).

• One name for this surface is a beetling-stone, related to beetling, a technique in the production of linen; one name for a wooden substitute is a battling-block.

• An individual home may have a laundry room; a utility room includes, but is not restricted to, the function of washing clothes.

• Many homeowners’ associations and other communities in the United States prohibit residents from using a clothesline outdoors, or limit such use to locations that are not
  visible from the street or to certain times of day.

• Those without a machine at home or the use of a laundry room must either wash their clothes by hand or visit a commercial self-service laundry (laundromat, laundrette) or
  a laundry shop, such as 5àsec.

• Legislation making it possible for thousands of American families to start using clotheslines in communities where they were formerly banned was passed in Colorado in 2008.

• [17] Sometimes only similar colors are washed together to avoid this problem, which is lessened by cold water and repeated washings.

• Right to dry movement Some American communities forbid their residents from drying clothes outside, and citizens protesting this have created a “right to dry” movement.

• Then they were hung up on poles or clothes lines to air dry, or sometimes just spread out on clean grass, bushes, or trees.

• Many professional laundry services are present in the market which offers at different price range.

• Laundry is still done this way in the rural regions of poor countries.

• [citation needed] Common problems Novice users of modern laundry machines sometimes experience accidental shrinkage of garments, especially when applying heat.

• Usually the machines are set to run only when money is put in a coin slot.

• The launderers were protected to some extent from rain, and their travel was reduced, as the facilities were usually at hand in the village or at the edge of a town.

• Shared laundry rooms In some parts of the world, including North America, apartment buildings and dormitories often have laundry rooms, where residents share washing machines
  and dryers.

• Sometimes large metal cauldrons (a “wash copper”, even when not made of that metal),[4] were filled with fresh water and heated over a fire, as hot or boiling water is more
  effective than cold in removing dirt.

• The city authorities wanted to give the poorer population, who would otherwise not have access to laundry facilities, the opportunity to wash their clothes.

• The washing will sometimes be done at a temperature above room temperature to increase the activities of any chemicals used and the solubility of stains, and high temperatures
  kill micro-organisms[citation needed] that may be present on the fabric.

• Some organizations have been campaigning against legislation which has outlawed line-drying of clothing in public places, especially given the increased greenhouse gas emissions
  produced by some types of electrical power generation needed to power electric clothes dryers, since driers can constitute a considerable fraction of a home’s total energy usage.

• [13][14] It is used to clean delicate fabrics that cannot withstand the rough and tumble of a washing machine and clothes dryer; it can also obviate labor-intensive hand washing.

• Agitation helps remove dirt which is usually mobilised by surfactants from between fibres, however, due to the small size of the pores in fibres, the ‘stagnant core’ of the
  fibres themselves see virtually no flow.

• Many laundry guides suggest washing whites separately from colored items.

• As such, wash-houses were an obligatory stop in many women’s weekly lives and became a sort of institution or meeting place.

 

Works Cited

[‘1. “Laundry”. The Free Dictionary By Farlex. Retrieved 2012-05-24.
2. ^ “How People Used to Wash: The Fascinating History of Laundry”. The Scrubba Wash Bag.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Katz-Hyman, Martha B.; Rice, Kym S. (2011). World of a slave: encyclopedia
of the material life of slaves in the United States. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-313-34942-3.
4. ^ The Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. III (Second ed.). Clarendon Press. 1989. p. 908: copper 3.a. ISBN 0-19-861215-X.
5. ^
“Ponch, punch or ?”. OldandInteresting.com. Retrieved 2014-03-06.
6. ^ Maxwell, Lee (2003). Save womens lives: history of washing machines (1st ed.). Eaton, CO: Oldewash. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-9729710-0-3.
7. ^ Hardyment, Christina (1988). From mangle
to microwave: the mechanization of household work. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-0206-1.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b c Yung, Judy; Chang, Gordon H.; Lai, Him Mark, eds. (2006), “Declaration of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance.”, Chinese American
Voices, University of California Press, pp. 183–185 (including notes), ISBN 0-520-24310-2
9. ^ Ban Seng Hoe (2004), Enduring Hardship: The Chinese Laundry in Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization, ISBN 0-660-19078-8
10. ^ Atkins, Keletso E.
(1986). “Origins of the AmaWasha: the Zulu Washermen’s Guild in Natal, 1850–1910*”. The Journal of African History. 27 (1): 41–57. doi:10.1017/S0021853700029194. ISSN 1469-5138. S2CID 162355451. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
11. ^ “Clothes washing mystery
solved by physicists”. Physics World. April 3, 2018.
12. ^ “How Does The Dry Cleaning Process Work?”. LX. 30 September 2014. Retrieved 21 November 2014. Dry cleaning is the process of deep cleaning clothing without using water. Usually reserved
for dress clothes and delicate fabric, it requires special equipment and detergents. Dry cleaning is typically a 5 step process. These steps are tagging the clothes, pretreating clothes, cleaning, quality checking, and ironing.
13. ^ “Toxic Substances
Portal – Tetrachloroethylene (PERC)”. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
14. ^ “Tetrachloroethylene (Perchloroethylene)”. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
15. ^ “The 2008 Florida Statutes (chapter: Energy devices based on renewable resources)”. Florida Senate.
2008. Retrieved 2020-02-23.[dead link]
16. ^ “Why Clothes Shrink”. NPR.org.
17. ^ “Your Guide to Washing Clothes, Including How to Keep Whites Bright and Darks from Fading”. Martha Stewart. February 14, 2011. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
18. ^
Katsnelson, Alla (2015). “News Feature: Microplastics present pollution puzzle”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (18): 5547–5549. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.5547K. doi:10.1073/pnas.1504135112. PMC 4426466. PMID 25944930.
Photo credit:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/112951086/’]