Thursday, November 10, 2011

Home Vocations for Girls: Laundering

6 comments:

TC said...

The having it sent to you part is good.

The assistance of a boy, even better.

Still... the laundry.

Though, to argue briefly on the side of laundering, I have had the occasion, over time, of observing some university work-study students folding towels, for hours at a stretch, and, repetitive as the labour obviously is/was,they actually seemed, in the course of performing it (with musical backdrop), I might almost go out on a limb and say, happy as clams.

After all, they will one day go on to perform jobs which are just as repetitive, much better paid, but a lot greater strain on the conscience.

(Conscience -- do they still have that??)

Lyle Daggett said...

"Dainty laces and delicate embroideries"... "Never go out to do work; always have it sent to you." This stuff reminds me, for some reason, of some of Marianne Moore's poems. (I, too, dislike it.)

During the Depression of the 1930's, my grandma (my mom's mom) took in laundry to help make ends meet.

They had a coal-burning furnace in the basement of their house. My mom's two older brothers (they would have been teenagers then) would go down by the railroad tracks that ran through the town, and gather stray pieces of coal that had fallen off the trains passing through -- this to help (however slightly) cut down on the cost of coal for heating the house.

Nin Andrews said...

Odd image, Tom. I do enjoy folding towels. If only it were just towels. Funny image.
An odd world full of dainties--I, too, dislike it and marvel at it.
Lyle, it sounds like you have a memoir to write . . .
Fascinating.

TC said...

During the Depression of Now, at our house we don't have heating or the washer/dryer apparatus. So those Other Centuries are always with us. One does accustom oneself, as in making do.

Really no task should be considered too menial or low if it is being performed, whether by girls or by boys or by women or by men, for a good purpose; not forgetting, as we were taught, that cleanliness is next to Godliness (yet at the same time not quite remembering what Godliness is... ?).

ACravan said...

May I join the towel folding brigade? I enjoy sweater folding also. Anything, especially things like this, is worth doing well, which is more complicated than most people know.

Lyle Daggett said...

Actually, during the years I was in high school, I was usually the one who did the laundry. Usually on Sunday. During the fall when I was watching Vikings football games on T.V., I would zip downstairs during timeouts and halftime to change loads.

I never learned any "official" ways to fold clothes or towels, etc., though I did learn to rolls socks.