The wash - February 14, 2012

There was still snow this morning, but it melted by the time I took Anya to the dog park at 2, and then another dusting came tonight while I was at dance practice. The temperature floated on either side of freezing, and it was overcast.

One of the signal changes in America (and the rest of the industrialized West) over the last 150 years, is the mechanization of basic home processes: laundry and dish washing, bathing, and on a more fundamental level, the heating of water. How many cold-water walkups are there still? What percentage of Americans do not have access to hot water from a tap? There are certainly still a fair number, but a growing proportion of those live intentionally.

The results are phenomenal, especially in the lives of women. Even if you don't have a washing machine, how many people wash their washing by hand, instead of going to the laundromat? Just live everyone should have the experience of doing dishes, everyone just once should try washing a load of laundry using a washboard. It's bloody hard work, and hard on your hands. In winter it's cramped, cold work.

It's kind of funny now to hear folks with environmental concerns trying to get people to give up the use of dryers. I mean, yes, they have a point. But for people who work their bottoms off day in, day out, not having to hang out the laundry every day and then take it in again, is a godsend.

I think, though I have no evidence to prove this, that the presence of washing machines also means we wash things more frequently. It takes less dirt to throw something in the wash, if it takes little of our work to clean it. When I discussed the rise of the hairwash over the last century earlier, I noted what a production early shampoo regimes were. Same holds true for body washing: when a bath involved heating kettles of water, even if you believed in bathing, it was a big production. And the same definitely holds true for clothing.