Water had to be hauled, sometimes from great distances, and boiled on the stove. Clothes were scrubbed on washboards and excess water wrung out by hand or with hand-cranked wringers called mangles. Neither method was as effective at removing water as a modern washing machine's spin cycle.
After everything was washed it had to be rinsed, the dirtiest items boiled on the stove, and starch or bluing added before a week-s worth of laundry was ready to be dried. More heavy lifting followed as women loaded the family's clothes, sheets, towels, etc.( still laden with water) into baskets and carried them outside. Hanging wet laundry onto clotheslines meant bending, lifting, reaching, pinning, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until every item had been hung, dried, and carried back to the house.
Although Part I of my novel Never Done doesn't focus on this Monday chore, I included it in the first scene while introducing the protagonist, Clara. Below is how "Cowboys and Clotheslines" and Never Done begins.
A blue-gray dawn cooled the parched San Luis Valley that day as Clara grabbed a bucket for the first
of many trips she’d make for water. La Jara Creek was only a stone’s throw from the back of the house, but a bucket of water was a two-handed carry for a girl of fourteen.
It was the middle of July. She wore a cuffed and collared blouse, full petticoat, long linen skirt, and button-top boots. By noon she was wiping her brow with the sleeve of her blouse. Her shoulders ached and her neck had a crick in it from hanging clothes on a line she could barely reach. Taught not to complain, she dealt with the drudgery in silence, wishing she’d been allowed to go to Santa Fe with the others.
“How much is left?” she asked her Aunt Lou halfway through the afternoon.
“Just Albert’s work clothes. I put them to boiling on the stove.”
Clara sighed, knowing her next task would be scrubbing the stains out of her pa’s clothes. Ranch work turned even a persnickety cowboy into a dirt ball, and Albert, who worked right alongside his men, got just as dirty as they did.
“When do you think Pa and the others will be back?”
“Anytime now…hopefully before nightfall.”
Twenty-two and unmarried, Lou was the youngest of Albert’s sisters. Her slender frame was bent over the rinse tub as she wrung out the contents piece by piece. A few strands of her hair had come loose. She tucked the hair behind her ears, and then hefted a basket of wet sheets as if it held cottonwood fluff. “Hurry up,” she said as she walked toward the clotheslines with the basket. “We need to finish before they arrive.”
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