Did anyone watch the Edwardian House the other year - when a big stately home was run for the summer by "servants" for the benefit of the "gentry"? They interviewed everyone at the end. The girl playing the head maid said that her grandma had been a maid and by the time she knew her grandma, her hands were very weak and floppy. She'd worn out her hands. She'd always wondered how on earth her grandma could have worn out her hands, but having done the job of maid for three months she really, really knew. When hurricane Sandy hit the NJ area, our power went out for days. We wound up having to wash our clothes by hand and having to hand wring them. It was an activity that was fun for our young kids and it gave us something constructive to do. But when it came to the wringing out the clothes part, the kids fled. Wringing out the clothes was a job and a half and I still didn’t do it properly as some towels took many days to dry on the clothes line. In addition, the residual detergent aggravated the skin on my hands. That is why I bought this wringer. When you think of “Made in America”, you think of something that costs more but is made with real quality. This wringer exceeded my quality expectations. It is like a Sherman tank. Very solid. It looks and feels like it will still be working for many generations to come. Whoever has hand washed laundry before knows that it’s quite a tough burden, and you never can hand wring wet clothes out enough so they will dry in a reasonable time. This is why a hand clothes wringer is so useful.

I'm trying keep the rubber in good condition, so I've got into the habit of washing down with warm clean water and taking off the pressure after each use. That's pretty impressive Cobnut. I've been thinking about a mangle and trying to psych myself up to doing the washing by hand but so far, have always retreated to the launderette, where one can legitimately read or knit or something, so as to ensure that perverts don't make off with your underwear!

The Egyptians are known for their cleanliness (they bathed frequently) and they used many cosmetics. Meanwhile in Babylon before 2,000 BC a form of soap was made. The Greeks knew that diet and exercise and keeping clean were important for health. The Greeks even invented a form of a shower, which sprayed bathers with water. Find sources: "Mangle"machine– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( February 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Finally, be careful where you place your hands as you’re working. A hand wringer certainly isn’t as dangerous as, say, a circular saw, but you could still give your hand or fingers a painful pinch. Keep your wringer away from very young children, and supervise older children if they’re going to help you with the laundry. A Brief History Of The Hand Wringer In the 19th century, toothpaste was sold in jars until 1892 when Washington Sheffield invented the collapsible toothpaste tube. Meanwhile, in 1888 the first modern deodorant was invented. It was called Mum.

The Steel Roll Mangle Co. of 108 Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois, offered a gas-heated home mangle for pressing linens in 1902. In the 1930s electric mangles were developed and are still a feature of many laundry rooms. They consist of a rotating padded drum which revolves against a heating element which can be stationary, or can also be a rotating drum. Laundry is fed into the turning mangle and emerges flat and pressed on the other side. This process takes much less time than ironing with the usual iron and ironing board. I did a proper clothes washing without a washing machine “dress rehearsal” yesterday and it was pretty successful. The Romans also knew that dirt encourages disease and they appreciated the importance of cleanliness. They built aqueducts to bring clean water into towns. In Roman towns, an important building was the public baths. In Roman times people went to the baths not just to get clean but also to socialize. Roman Baths consisted of a frigidarium or cold room, a epidarium or warm room, and a caldarium or hot room. You usually finished with a dip in a cold pool. To clean themselves Romans rubbed their skin with oil and scraped it off with a tool called a strigil. (The Romans also made soap).

Towel and rope method

In the 19th century, most homes also had a scullery. In it was a ‘copper’, a metal container for heating water for washing clothes. The copper was filled with water and soap powder was added. To wash the clothes they were turned with a wooden tool called a dolly. Or you used a metal plunger with holes in it to push clothes up and down. Slightly off-subject, early photos of working women sometimes feature a woman wearing a man's cap - she would be a widow who had become breadwinner and head of the household.