BLUE MONDAY: Doing Laundry in America National Heritage Museum, Lexington, Massachusetts Through March 4, 2006 www.monh.org
Solace from stress can take strange forms. Some people seek tranquility in yoga or bungee jumping; for others, doing laundry induces an incomparable feeling of calm. The swirl of colors as the clothes tumble and spin in the washing machine can exert a hypnotic effect, and the sight of a pile of clean, ironed, and folded garments offers a serene sense that, for a short while and in a small way, one has smoothed away the chaos of the world.
Alas, it was not always this easy. Back in the 18th century, laundry was a two-day affair that involved hauling water from a well, chipping soap into flakes, soaking clothes overnight, pounding them in a tub, boiling and tinting grubby items with a blueing dye, rinsing repeatedly, and then wringing, starching, drying, dampening, and ironing clothes with a heavy iron heated over a hearth. It was hard labor, and it was primarily performed by women.
The invention of washing machines changed all that, and an engrossing exhibition documents how this modest piece of technology transformed American society in a most dramatic way. Blue Monday—the blue refers to the dye that made clothes glimmer white, and Monday was once the preferred day for washing—is an exceptional collection of washing gadgets and widgets: soap chippers, mangles, wringers, irons, stirrers, and plungers, as well as old soap boxes and "magic" detergents. The best items in the exhibit, however, are the washing machines, many of them manually operated by cranks or handles. There are only a few of our familiar automatic electric appliances.
That's because for more than a century after the first patent was issued to a New Hampshire inventor in 1797, the washing machine was a mechanical contraption powered by people, not motors. All such machines had to fulfill two basic requirements: They had to pound, paddle, rub, or squeeze the clothes while agitating the water by rocking, turning, or boiling it. A collection of miniature salesmen's models—carried around in place of brochures, apparently—shows how some of the early machines worked. Users of the 1888 Edwards' Compound Lever Washing Machine pulled a handle back and forth, forcing clothes in a collapsible cage to be squeezed, tugged over ribbed bars, and drenched in jets of water. The square, wood-topped Wonder Washer, patented in 1904, featured a crank that turned a rudderlike agitator, as well as a ledge on which a wringer could be perched.
