I have a favorite set of sheets, I’m sure most of you do. I love smelling them when they come out of the dryer smelling of fabric softener, spreading them on the bed and enjoying the clean and/or fragrant smell. Thank heaven for automatic washers and dryers even though if I had the choice I would rather hang my sheets out to dry on a clear spring day. There is nothing like that fresh air smell when you bring them in and nothing can duplicate that clean fresh air smell that I know of, even today. So, what are your thoughts when you were growing up, did you have a favorite set of sheets or did you even have sheets? Well, what I remember is this.
I was raised in New Jersey, lived in a house with my grandmother first and then my aunt. The family home had a backyard with a shed and what I remember most, is the clothes lines. The key word here is clothes lines. Do you remember Argo starch? I do, I even remember hearing that, back in the day, some pregnant women ate the starch right out of the box, I guess to satisfy a graving or something. My memories are so vivid regarding the steps that were necessary to have clean, sweet smelling sheets that I really appreciate what time and change can do to a sheet in this day, thread count 500, etc. Was thread count being used back then, I wonder.
Our clothes were washed in what was then known as a wringer washer. You know, a round tub with four legs, that you hooked up to the sink to control the clean water coming in and the dirty water going out. Somewhat similar to what we have today although definitely a whole lot more modern. On the back of this tub was an apparatus that looked like a wash board. This was where you inserted the clothes through the openings, piece by piece, to wring the water out of the clothes, the wringer washer. Items such as blouses and shirts had to be placed in a solution of starch mixed with water, soaked, wrung out and taken outside to be hung up to dry. Here is where it gets interesting. The Atlantic Ocean surrounds a good part of the city I live in and when it is winter, it is cold, I mean really cold. So, picture me bundled up to keep warm in my backyard hanging up clothes. The sheets especially had to be folded once and using clothes pins, spread out across the lines. This was bad enough, especially when it was in the teens and the wind was blowing. But picture these same clothes and sheets when it is time to take them in. Oh, my goodness, the clothes and especially the sheets are stiff as a board, hard to handle and hard to fold. (Lets not even think about my fingers and nose). The sheets and items such as blouses and shirts are then sprinkled with water until damp, rolled up like rolling pins and wrapped in a towel. After an unspecified amount of time these items, sheets included, are ready to iron, yes, iron.
I’m assuming that these sheets I had to learn to iron were made out of probably 100% cotton or something similar. In any event, ironing sheets to put on a bed to sleep on made absolutely no sense to me at all. They are wrinkled when you iron them, your iron them and smooth them out and then you lay on them to wrinkle them again. They looked really good when you first put them on the bed, and then…….the cycle begins all over again.
I appreciate so much in my older years, especially since I was on the other end of the spectrum when things were “a little old fashioned” and was the norm , not thinking that someday, things would be a tad bit better, fabrics with wrinkles was almost non-existent and washers and dryers, especially now clean, steam and almost hang themselves up. I am thankful for the experience (though I wasn’t thankful then) that allows me to be so appreciative of what is now and knowing about what used to be. Thinking back gives a whole new meaning to the words “little things mean a lot.”
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