Love your laundry room
In the ’50s, the love you had for your kitchen paled only in comparison to the adoration you felt for your washer and dryer. (Don’t miss How to be a perfect fifties housewife: In the kitchen!)
The laundry adoration society
Your dryer was so efficient, you could even leave the door to outside wide open — even when it was raining — while you gingerly caressed your favorite pink appliances (featuring matching cabinetry).
Decorating the room for extra happiness
You might even put up a mobile to make the laundry room even cheerier, given all the time you liked to spend in there. (We imagine that the mother and daughter in this photo had been standing there, snuggling the blanket, for an hour and a half when this photo was taken.)
The perfect housewife gets dressed up for the wash
Your reverence for these household machines ought to suggest the appropriate formal attire for laundering duties.
All about that “magic minute”
It’s all so keen, you were even cool with showing off your wonderfully clean apron while Junior sat on the floor… eating a bowl of mud.
Just turn it on like this!
Doing laundry in the 1950s was so simple! You only needed one hand!
That’s… not how it works
“Ah, yes, ma’am — I think I figured out the problem. See, you’re supposed to take the detergent out of the box.”
A little musical accompaniment
Laundry time was all the more fun when the work was accompanied by ukulele music.
A good fifties housewife makes the laundry room comfortable for guests
When you were done pointing to the clothes, always take a seat and help yourself to a piece of fruit — all conveniently located nearby!
That’s not really how it works
A stacked washer/dryer helps with housework drudgery
If you folded some towels and set them out — next to a cup of detergent — you could go relax. Fool the world into thinking you’re hard at work doing laundry.
When washing machines make you want to dance
This fifties housewife is so happy! But let’s be honest: That dress had some serious static cling issues.
This flying dress thing became quite popular, apparently.
And the kids in the foreground, dressed in all white while using their paint box? Yeah, you’re going to need to do a lot of laundry.
A washer AND dryer was twice as much fun!
The clones inspect the newfangled machinery while their original counterpart is off-camera having a martini and watching “I Love Lucy.”
In their ideal world, everything matches
“Look, Junior! Here’s an identical shirt I washed earlier!”
When Myrna’s towel obsession was getting out of hand
The real reason she loved doing the laundry: the chance to caress the towels.
How you know you’ve been doing too much laundry
When your baby has actually come to crave fabric softener.
This sure beat the drudgery of living in black & white!
And she could finally get out of the house for once.
MORE: Women: Do you have the ideal figure? Here’s what ‘they’ thought in 1950
“No wonder that she beams so!”
Let’s face it — this ’50s housewife looks pretty darn smug about her laundering abilities.
’50s housewife with her laundry: “So that’s what it does!”
This happy housewife looks a little surprised to see that the washing machine actually cleaned the sheets.
Eve was shocked to realize that the swush-swush was coming from inside the house!
Everyone admires having clothes that aren’t unsanitary
She’s especially happy because the wash wasn’t just clean — it was sanitary and white!
Something for everyone
Six loads of laundry per day. Perfect!
Mansplaining, ’50s-style
“Now you fold it like I did here, and make a neat little stack. Keep them flat.”
“F… fold?”
What are you doing back there?
Standing behind the washing machine isn’t really the optimal scenario. (And pouring in the fabric softener without even looking? That’s not going to end well.)
“Eddie thinks I’m in here doing laundry! Ha!”
3 Responses
You would be happy, smiling and showing off your laundry room too, if you no longer had to use an old fashioned wringer washer and hang clothes out on the line to dry.
Or better yet, no longer have to hang them anywhere! Like all over the basement, or up in the attic, when the weather was vile and rainy, up to and including the “monsoon season” in some places!
I remember one April some years back – in the Midwest – about 1995 or 1996(?) when it rained every single day, except for two of them. And even they weren’t consecutive days! Or even constantly snowy and icy for months!
I mean really, who wants to repeatedly lug baskets of wet laundry upstairs out of the /basement, and after you’ve put on a heavy coat over your dress, gloves, a head scarf and SNOW BOOTS, then carry them outside to try and get them dry in the frigid air. But of course, they don’t dry – they just freeze solid! The water doesn’t really evaporate, it just freezes up. And then you have to eventually pull them off the line, frozen stiff, and gently “break” them up to get them in your basket so you can thaw them out and finish drying them inside.
The only advantage is you really didn’t have to sprinkle all the items requiring ironing. Which was most of them, including all the 100% cotton sheets and pillowcases, all your dresses, your daughter’s dresses and most of her play clothes, your son’s shirts and7 pants, the old man’s shirts for work AND “play” as well as all his slacks, AND his boxers! Yep, plenty of men out there wanted their boxer shorts pressed neatly, but NO starch of course! 😜
The really lucky wives of course, either got to SEND OUT the laundry, in which case she didn’t get to have a snazzy, colorful laundry room with all the latest gadgets and a washer-dryer pair with all the whiz-bang bells and whistles, because, well, why? Or not quite so lucky but still pampered in that all his business shirts and ties were sent out once a week to be done at the local laundry in town that did the best job, IF you got to choose between two or more. Only one meant you still had a choice – send them out, or do them all yourself! Of course in any case, his suits got sent to the Cleaners which had them all dry cleaned, and pressed with creases in all the right places in a jiffy!
Washers and dryers were available then but cost do much even then. So thing that show all the washer and dryer advertisement was really a new and amazing product. I know today we all laugh and carry on. But I personally could imagination how suprising, Shocking and bewildered by this thing that is sitting in my home. Now that I have been redoing my whole house as authentic 1950s as possible I have now a beautiful colorful and raither fun room to do my loundary and i kinda like doing it.