The Reimer Girls Help with the Clean Wash

January 31, 1934  H. H. Reimer girls helped take care of the clean wash, ironing, folding, and mending.  K. H. Reimers came over.

Baby Anna was only five days old, so mother Margaret was still in bed resting and recovering.  Mary was busy with housework and caring for the mother and newborn, so she needed help with the wash.  After a baby was born, it was common for single Mennonite girls to come for a day or even several weeks to work.  This day several daughters of Henry H. Reimer, Margaret’s brother, came over to help with the clean wash.  They were probably Catharina, Mary, and Helen Reimer, whom we knew in later years as just “the Reimer girls.”

Everything needed to be ironed or pressed with a mangle – shirts, pants, dresses, dish towels, sheets, pillowcases, etc.  It would have been embarrassing to wear an unironed piece of clothing because it would have proven to the entire world the slovenly housekeeping standards of the mother.  The linens should be nice and crisp when they were put on the beds.  And who would want to dry dishes with a wrinkled dish towel?

Of course, ironing was not so easy without electricity.  Metal irons had to be heated on a stove to just the right temperature so as not to scorch the fabric, and then clothes were pressed until the iron had cooled, and the process was repeated.  Everything was folded neatly and put away.  And then clothes that were torn or worn needed to be mended.  Holes were patched and re-patched because it was expensive to buy cloth and make clothes.  Holes in socks were darned.  When collars and cuffs wore out, they were replaced rather than throwing away the entire garment.  No clothes were disposed of until they were well and truly worn out, and then they were cut up into rags, which themselves had innumerable uses around the house and farm.

Laundry Day

January 24, 1933  The children did laundry.  Mama helped.  I helped make meals and helped take care of the little boys.  In the afternoon Jacob and Corney plowed.  Very nice day.

Doing laundry.  It sounds so simple today, but less than a century ago it was a task that was involved the whole family and took all day.  (Although this day was a Tuesday, usually the Siemens did laundry on Monday.)  The Siemens had a small wash house next to the main house where they had some shelter from the cold and wind while they did laundry.  There was a lot of heavy work involved, so the men and boys participated too. 

First, a fire had to be built to heat water in the huge kettle, the Miagrope, and water carried from the well.  [CORRECTION:  The Siemens had their laundry in the basement, so it was a warm place to wash in winter once the fire under the Miagrope got going.  They had a cistern that collected rainwater and a faucet in the basement from which they got the water for laundry.  Rainwater was softer, so it required less soap.  Cornelius was good at fixing up conveniences such as this.  They only got the summer kitchen/wash house in the 1940s.]  If blocks of homemade soap had not been shredded earlier, that had to be done as well.  Then the hot water, soap, and dirty clothes were put into a hand agitator which was rocked back and forth to clean the clothes.  Agitating was hard work, so everyone took turns.  Then the clean clothes had to be rinsed of the dirty, soapy water, run through rollers to press the water out, and hung on the line to dry.

On this day “the children” did laundry – Mary, Jake, Corney, and John.  They were teenagers, so they took the main responsibility and wife Margaret only had to help.  Cornelius helped his wife make meals so that there would be food ready for the hungry laundry crew and took care of “the little boys” – Henry (21 months old) and Elmer (9 months).  Cornelius had been a widower with four children from 1920 to 1930, so he had had to make meals and keep house before, unlike most men of that era, and he could even bake bread.  As a result, more than most husbands, he appreciated housework and was willing able to help in the kitchen and with the little children.

Then after dinner, Jake and Corney escaped the laundry and went to the field to spend a very nice day plowing in the field, leaving Mary and John to finish the laundry.