I'm Thankful For...

This week I am thankful for so many things.  I just got done talking to both of my sisters and both of my daughters, who could ask for more in life!  But, when I was downstairs working on the basement (it's almost done!) I was putting in a load of laundry and noticed my old ringer washer, looking so lonely in the corner.

I remember so well helping my grandmother do the laundry with an old ringer washer - sort the clothes, fill the washer with hot water, grate the laundry soap, let it agitate (for as long as you like), run the clothes through the ringer.  Now, you have to remember, water heaters did not hold much water, so you had to put in the whites first, then the lights, then the darks, because you probably used the same water for at least two of those batches, maybe all of them if the water was not too dirty!  After you put them through the ringer to get out most of the dirty water, you had to fill the washer again to rinse - and the process started all over again.

Then after each batch was rinsed and put through the ringer again,  you would take the clothes out and hang them on the clothes line.  Oh, how I love to hang clothes out!  To this day, I think of my beautiful grandmother each time I hang out a batch of laundry.  I love the way that the clothes smell,  before and after they are dried.  Grandma always said that if you took time to hang the clothes just right, it would cut down on your ironing, so that's how I hang clothes.

One time, when my kids were little, I was talking to my sweet grandmother and I made the mistake of complaining about doing laundry - she really scolded me and told me to remember how we used to do laundry - I even got the lecture about getting water from the canal and heating it over a fire!!  She said that she never wanted to hear me complain about something that is so easy to do.  How truly blessed we are to have electricity and automatic washing machines.

So I am thankful for my automatic washing machine!  But I still love to hang my clothes out on the line.  Take the time you would have spent 75 years ago doing the laundry and call your sister or your daughter . . . . . .do it for me . . . and my grandma..

Blessings, Barb