I don’t mind cleaning the boat, except when it comes down to the occasional DEEP CLEAN that has to be carried out. Usually on a quarterly basis, you know the one whereby you have to do more than tickle the surface with a feather duster…
Today was curtain cleaning day. I bunged the first lot in the washer & it didn’t take very long at all to finish. In fact that wash was wayyy too short. I always have it on “energy saver,” but last time I’d used it, I hit “time saver” too…
Hence it was still set on “time saver,” but you don’t want time saving when it comes to curtains, so I’ve just put them through again. Which ironically means it’s taken almost twice as long as intended…
Complaint over ///
Especially when I think back to what me mother had to go through when it came to cleaning, I mean any kind of cleaning. In fact, before I went to school I got the impression cleaning, cooking & washing (whilst listening to Radio 1) was what life was all about…
Although to be fair, she did take weekends off while my dad was free of work, that’s when we all went out & did silly stuff, which usually included a lot of walking somewhere or other. Sometimes down a towpath…
But at that age, the local park was much more fun… {NAG NAG} I remember crawling through the maze of concrete tunnels was a bonus to the swings & the slide. Till you fell off – no wood chips everywhere in those days…
I never fancied the sand-pit shaped like a boat though, simply because it wasn’t all orange like on a beach. It varied in colour from black to puce, ugh, & sometimes fellow infants had a wee in it…
So Monday was wash day, & it took ALL DAY. She had a washer with a luxury mangle on top of it, I used to stand in awe watching what went through that mangle, (till I got bored). Even knickers & my dad’s underpants went through with the turn of a handle. If she was in “time saver” mode, several pairs would be sent through in a pile, while the 2 rollers parted under the strain. Then all items had to be suspended from the rack on the kitchen roof to dry. Beef curry tonight dear…???
Hoovering involved management of a big long hose connected to a pig on wheels, called “Electrolux” it was tempting to sit on the pig while mother wheeled me round. But she always told me the hose might pull out of it’s socket, so I waited till her back was turned & tried it out several times. However it wasn’t much fun because it tended to stay in one place for too long…
As for polishing, well that’s something I was allowed to help out with. I’d make more of a mess than there was before, not to mention ornaments taking off spontaneously. So she’d end up with her hands well & truly full, but I never got told off for that because I was trying to “help.”
A few years later the luxury mangle was donated to the rag & bone man, & my mum took proud possession of a spinner. They had to have separate spinners in those days because nobody had thought that washers might be capable of spinning round the kitchen by themselves…
The nearest thing was a “twin-tub,” but only posh people had those, both a washer & a spinner housed in the same outer casing, wow. The spinner’s sole purpose in life was simply to replace the mangle’s job. It didn’t really enhance the whole experience of clothes washing management at all…
Our “standalone” spinner also had a couple of extra features. It could spin itself all round the kitchen & sounded louder than a rocket taking off. The first of these 2 useless features meant it had to be monitored (avoided). If an innocent bystander was in the vicinity, the danger of being nudged & “spun” off through a window was just too great. The second useless feature meant eardrums were in danger of being blown…
Even so, my mum thought her spinner was wonderful, but “the rack” was still a necessary item, because things still didn’t come out dry. The idea of a domestic DRIER was still light years away, unthinkable…
Right, I’m off to iron my curtains, there’s a curtain iron certain irony there, because I haven’t put them through the drier – too many creases…
So it’s about time someone invented an automatic washer / drier with a self ironing option for those items which can’t be tumble dried… When not in use, it could be used as a fridge too…
Talking of fridges, I think these guys needed one earlier, taking shelter from the sun under a jetty…
Then one of them saw me & thought I was a spinning food machine…
Not on these jetty’s mate, quack off…
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