Fascinating! Thank you for sharing.

I think we tend to take it all for granted these days. One of my sons literally throws every article of clothing in the laundry whether it's dirty or clean, even if he just tried it on for 2 minutes. He changes his undies a million times a day (not necessary). We could take a page from history to learn how to conserve water and energy these days.

Fascinating! My husband's family owns a laundromat. I will have to print this out and share it with them, as so much has changed!

Ironing was my family chore in a family of 6 and shifted over pretty quickly when my mom returned to the workforce when I was 9. We had cloth table clothes and napkins, pillow cases, and tea towels, as well as shirts, some cotton trousers cotton dresses.

I ironed DH's flannel shirts (no starch) when we were first married, and his Oxford and cotton shirts, and chinos later on. About 25 years ago he showed interest and I taught him how to iron his clothes. He has been doing all the ironing since (including mine). He waits for 2 weeks accumulation and then during a football games sets up the ironing board and iron and goes to work!

I still do all the mending, or anything related to sewing such as hemming or buttons.

Another lost art is caring for footwear. Polishing shoes or boots and brushing out suede seems a lost art. I was paid 10 cents a shoe to polish my dad's and mom's shoes!

One use for rags was for the production of high quality paper. A high 'rag content' could be found in good quality writing paper or artists paper and the kind of paper you would use for card stock, or some books. Dollar bills also contained a high rag content, until the newfangled high tech synthetics. FWIW, security controls can be embedded into the new synthetic bills vs printed onto the older paper/rag bills where security features were printed on top. Thus reducing chances for counterfeit.

Carla - We were iron allowance twins!! Glad to hear I wasn't the only one ironing pillowcases and tea towels!!

Late to the party, but that was really interesting. Thanks, Rachy. xo

Thx, Angie. It just fascinates me how different things were, but how modern it all must have felt at the time.

Thistle - No water heater in the '30s/'40s sounds unbelievable to me; but then again there was sharecropping right up into the '60s, yes? And now we're talking tankless water heaters...

E - Do you know how far rags were transported for paper? Or if there was a local papermill everywhere?

ladywone - I thought it was very cool of my uncle to take it upon himself to do the drawing. When I saw the drawing it made me think of a lot of other things. Like, what sort of flooring did they have? The materials of the era. (Linoleum, wood, concrete, btw :))

retailgirl - You know what a mangle is?! I saw that word on the drawing and haven't a clue. My mum described what my grandma did where the 'mangle' is, but she didn't use the word. Now I'm unclear...

jackie - I'm tempted to do laundry like your son. My complicated system has gotten out of hand...

Karie - It would be so interesting to hear what your husband's family has to say. You know, I do believe while I was growing up and heard folks talk about my grandparent's "laundry" - I do believe I thought they meant dry cleaners. But no, we're talking regular laundry. Bachelors, my mum said, would bring in all their laundry. Like their dirty socks. I cannot imagine anyone else touching my socks. Even sort of freaks me out. Lol.

Runcarla - Yes! Shoe polishing! My dad always polished his shoes. He had a whole box with a little stand to put the shoe on. I remember him instructing me when I was little. I thought the box was fascinating. The rag, the polish, the brush... All the different colour polishes. Now they have those funny little bottles with the sponge at the end, but I think most people just toss their shoes and get a new pair, I swear...