Wash On Monday - The Depression Laundry Room

In our 1920s neighborhood, almost every backyard had a clothesline, and we can imagine what busy places they must have been on Mondays, the traditional wash day, as in this image from a 1931 P&G naptha soap ad. They are disappearing one-by-one, though as elderly neighbors pass on and new owners remove these “relics” of laundry days past.

For Depression era housewives who were able to take advantage of new, modern conveniences, doing the laundry was safer and less physically demanding than it had been for their mothers and grandmothers. In homes that could afford electric washing machines, at least, there was no having to boil gallons of hot water and wring the wash by hand. They also had the benefit of commercially-produced laundry soaps, which were not only safer than the old lye soaps, but claimed to clean clothes better with less scrubbing and rinsing. Most soaps were marketed as suitable for washing dishes as well as laundry. Some of the leading brands of the era were Lux, Super Suds, Ivory, Rinso, Chipso, Gold Dust, and Oxydol. Other wash day-related products included Fels-Naptha, P&G white naptha soap; Clorox bleach; and Mrs. Stewarts bluing.

Lux was the king of the soap flakes, probably due in part to their fabulous advertising campaign. The following pages are from a smart little promotional booklet, "How to Launder" (produced by Lever Bros., then makers of Lux) c.1920. Much of their advice still holds good today, such as removing buttons before washing, as the wood underneath can cause staining.

Although no longer available under the Lux name, soap flakes are still produced by Dri-Pak, a British firm, using the same recipe, and can be obtained through their website and select retail stores.

For additional advice on cleaning vintage items, we the fashion-era website’s vintage cleaning tips may be relied upon, as well as Vintage Vixen's vintage clothing care information.

In some lucky households, the laundry was dealt with by servants or sent out. For them, getting a washing machine meant more work, not less. The commercial laundry industry, facing heavy competition due to the increasing availability of domestic washing machines, launched an advertising campaign in the late 1920s into the early 30s, with slogans such as "Laundry Clothes are Cleaner" and "The Laundry Does it Best." While many women may have found the idea appealing, for economic reasons fewer and fewer opted to "Let the Laundry Do it."

We confess that if faced with the daunting task of washing, say, a wool blanket equipped with nothing more than a tub, a wringer, and some soap flakes, we would probably bury it in the backyard and buy a new one… but to make "blue Mondays" more fun, we acquired some recordings of vintage radio "soap operas" from OTRCat.com and enjoy listening to them while doing the washing and ironing. We have Super Suds' Clara, Lu, ‘n Em (1931-42); Oxydol's Ma Perkins (1933-56); Young Widder Brown (1938-56); and Kay Fairchild (1938-42).

For further reading:
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (1983).

Lee Maxwell’s Washing Machine Museum