A LOW-COST LAUNDRY.--BLUE MONDAY.--BASEMENT LAUNDRY.--LOW-COST
CONVENIENCES.--INEXPENSIVE LAUNDRY FITTINGS.--HOT AND COLD WATER
ARRANGEMENTS.--A LABOR-SAVING LAUNDRY.--A PLACE TO DO
FRUIT-CANNING.
The term "Blue Monday" probably originated on account of its being
general wash-day, and a day in which everybody about the house undertook
to do an impossible amount of work with limited resources.
Most of the washings in this country are done in the kitchen. The
wash-boiler is on the stove, and the servant or mistress of the house,
or both, attempt to wash and do their cooking without seriously
disturbing the routine of meals. There is a fussiness about everything
pertaining to that day, which creates an atmosphere of blueness which is
proverbial. The steamy, crowded kitchen, the almost inevitable wetness
or slipperiness, the great physical exertion required, the carrying of
water, the lifting of tubs, are all uncomfortable, and the work is done
at a great disadvantage. In an expensive house, where there is plenty of
money, Monday is not so blue. Immunity is purchased. Possibly the
clothes are sent from the house to be washed in somebody else's kitchen;
maybe to be worn by some one else before they are returned, and often to
be injured or destroyed by the strong washing-mixtures and soaps, which
are made to save rubbing. This kind of immunity is expensive. It is too
expensive for the large majority of people. It is annoying to all
alike.
Laundry work will sometime be done at a cost which will admit of people
of moderate means having this work done at a public laundry. At present,
the general laundry work of an ordinary household cannot be done in this
way, on account of the expense.
The general public laundry, where arrangements are made to do the entire
family washing at a low cost, is a complete solution of the Blue-Monday
problem; but until the laundry is an accomplished fact, such work will
be done at home, and a family laundry must be considered in
house-building. It would be a very easy matter to arrange a laundry
which would meet all the desired conditions, if we were to operate
independent of cost, but the large majority of people are not
independent in this way. If it were not a matter of cost, we would have
an independent room for the laundry work, with porcelain tubs, and hot
and cold water running into all of them; we could have a steam-drier,
and many other things, which it is useless to mention here. It is the
laundry of the moderate-cost house which interests the largest number of
people.
We must have a place to do laundry work which is a compromise between
the foggy kitchen and the laundry with porcelain tubs.
As houses are now built, the first floor is usually from two and a half
to three feet above the grade. This affords abundant opportunity of
getting a well-lighted basement. If the basement is dark, put more
windows in it, and whitewash the walls and ceilings. Cement the floor.
Put in a slop sink, and give it a trapped connection with the vault or
sewer. Provide a pump over this sink to connect with the cistern. If the
city water is soft, this will be used and no pump will be required. Then
a laundry stove is to be provided. Thus we have everything ready for
use without much labor, and certainly at a very low cost.
The basement should be light under any circumstances. The floor should
be cemented, the joists should be whitewashed, so that the only
additions necessary to make the laundry work easy are a laundry stove, a
place to throw waste water, and a supply of hot and cold water. If one
does not care to heat the water in the ordinary boiler, there is a very
simple device for heating water which may be placed in any laundry. An
open tank, which will hold two or three barrels of water, can be placed
over the stove and next to the joist. From it a connection can be made
with the laundry stove by means of lead and iron pipe. This pipe should
start from the bottom of the tank and connect with an iron pipe which
enters the stove, and passes around the inside of the fire-pot, then to
the outside and connects with another lead pipe, which empties into the
tank again on a level above the first opening. Thus the cold water would
come from the bottom of the tank, through the stove where it would be
heated, thence upward and into the tank. This would give a hot-water
circulating connection, and in this way provide hot water for use in the
laundry. This arrangement would require a low-cost force-pump to force
the water to the tank. There are many kinds of these pumps, which are
substantial and can be secured at a low cost. The pipe from the stove
could be supplied with a compression cock from which the water could be
drawn into the tubs. The better way would be to have an independent tank
connection. Lead pipe was mentioned as being the pipe to use in making
the connection with the iron pipe in the laundry stove. Galvanized iron
pipe would answer every purpose and cost a little less. Where set tubs
are not used, the water could be readily distributed by means of a hose
pipe. If the above arrangement is too expensive, the stove only can be
used for heating water.
Set tubs might be used instead of the ordinary wooden ones which were
contemplated, and would save a good deal of labor, but the cost is
something which all cannot afford. The arrangement described here can be
reached by nearly every one of moderate means. It provides a place to
throw slop water, and brings hot and cold water close at hand. It
isolates the washing from the cooking, and the smell of washing from the
whole house. It is very different from the conditions in most houses,
where the water has to be carried from the backyard into the house,
lifted to the stove, poured into the tubs, and afterward carried out, a
bucket at a time, and emptied over the back fence, if the tub is not
dragged out and emptied into the yard.
It is well in building a new house to have an outside cellar-way to
facilitate the use of the laundry below. In such a case the clothes can
be carried into the yard without being taken through the kitchen. There
will be times when the weather will not permit taking the clothes
outdoors. In very cold weather it should never be done. It is murderous
for a woman to have to carry clothes from a hot, steamy laundry or
kitchen at eighty degrees to the cold, dry air of the outside. There is
no woman so strong that she can stand this. All the clothes can be
readily dried in the basement. Here is presented another argument in
favor of the laundry below. The washing can always be done at the
appointed time in spite of the weather. When one goes into a large attic
he is apt to say, "What a splendid place to dry clothes." People who dry
clothes in the attic usually do the washing in the kitchen.
A basement laundry is a cool place in summer and a warm one in winter.
There is no better place for ironing in warm weather, for even with a
fire the basement is always cool. Nor can there be a better place for
canning fruit. The conveniences of plenty of water, a fire, and yet a
cool place for doing this extremely laborious work, will be readily
appreciated.