This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes

This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes

This is the Way
We Wash Our Clothes
by Barbara Pierce

From the Editor: The following article appeared in Remember to
Feed the Kittens, the sixteenth in the NFB's Kernel Book series of paperbacks.
It begins with Dr. Maurer's introduction:
As regular Kernel Book
readers know, Barbara Pierce is President of the National Federation of the
Blind of Ohio, the mother of three grown children, the wife of a college English
professor, an accomplished homemaker, and the writer of delightful stories
that sparkle with wit and wisdom. Her current offering is no exception. Here
is what she has to say:

Do you recall the children's song called, I seem to remember, "This is
the Way We Wash Our Clothes"? In successive verses singers work their
way through the days of the week demonstrating with motions the way we wash
our clothes, iron our clothes, mend our clothes, sweep the floor, and bake
the bread.
With the ironing board
and the broom nearly extinct today and the bread machine creating most of
the fresh bread in modern homes, perhaps children no longer take delight in
singing this little tune. On the other hand, I had very little idea of what
a wash board was when I was a child, yet we vigorously mimed washing our clothes
on a wash board. It never occurred to us to wonder where the washing machine
had disappeared to in the song.
I had a bit of vision
when I was a small child, but not enough to pick up the motions that went
with the song by observing the leader or the other children. My mother carefully
taught me how to move my hands and arms and also what those motions represented.
I suspect I may have been the only child in my group who knew that those pushing
gestures in the Thursday verse represented kneading the bread.
But Mother wasn't satisfied
simply to teach me to go through the motions of taking care of a home; she
insisted that I learn how to be an effective member of the family. Once I
overcame my initial annoyance at being forced to do chores around the house,
I have always been grateful that she invested the effort to teach me to be
self-sufficient.
How does one do the laundry
without looking at the job? The secret of efficient clothes washing is proper
sorting. But how does a blind person accurately sort colors and fabrics? The
answer is by touch.
My first laundry task
as a small child was to collect my father's dress shirts for their trip to
the laundry, where the collars could be starched stiff, the way Dad liked
them. I liked the stiff collars too, because it was easy to find them quickly
in the dirty clothes hamper. The rest of the laundry got sorted on the basement
floor. Underwear and sheets could go together. Jeans, wash pants, and boys'
and men's socks formed the basis of another pile. Obviously delicate fabrics
made a third stack.
With those things out
of the way, I was left with all the pieces that might be light colored or
might be dark. There was nothing to do but learn to identify them. I quickly
discovered that I already knew the colors of my own clothes. I knew what I
had worn in recent days and thrown into the wash. For the rest of the family
I had to memorize the colors by identifying texture, buttons, and location
of pockets and zippers. In the early days Mother checked to see that I had
sorted the loads correctly, but eventually we learned to trust my own decisions.
After all, if I really wasn't sure in which pile a garment belonged, I could
leave it out for later consultation.
Naturally I had to learn
the hard way to check for crayons in pockets. But all of us have discovered
to our sorrow what happens when a red crayon melts in the dryer all over a
load of light-colored clothes. Actually, throughout all the years of laundry
for my own three children, I had surprisingly few of these catastrophes. This
is undoubtedly because my fingers pay close attention to information like
a bit of extra weight or a hard object in a pocket under several layers of
cloth.
Like every other washing
machine in the nation, mine has always tended to eat socks. I cannot imagine
where so many single socks can disappear in a load of wash. Before I discovered
the solution to this problem, we had a designated orphan drawer in our house.
All unmated socks that came through the wash went into that drawer. In an
emergency a desperate child could usually assemble a passable pair of socks
from the extras.
Then I decided to take
radical action. I couldn't match a dryer full of single socks anyway, so I
put a bowl of safety pins in the bathroom and told everybody to pin socks
together before they went into the laundry baskets. I promised that, if socks
were pinned, they would be returned to the owner folded together. If they
went through the wash one by one, they would be dumped into the orphan drawer.
Everyone soon learned that it was simpler to pin the socks together than to
brave the sock drawer in search of something to wear.
I said earlier that the ironing board is almost extinct in America. I certainly
don't iron nearly as much as my mother did or as I did when I was a kid. But
mine still gets a fair workout, even today. Partly this is because I have
the luxury of a laundry room on the second floor. It is a converted sun porch.

When we first moved to
our home, built in 1891, I found myself carrying laundry from the bathroom
at the back of the second floor to the staircase at the front of the house
and then back to the basement steps at the rear of the first floor. Our house
is large--thirteen rooms--and our then toddler was frightened to be left alone
while I went off to feed the washer and dryer. So I usually carried not only
the dirty clothes but also the squirmy baby whenever I made this extended
trip.
It was great exercise,
but I began to have fantasies about having the washer and dryer on the second
floor. That is where they have been now for twenty years, and it is a lovely
arrangement. The only drawback is that I am tempted to toss a load into the
washer late in the evening and into the dryer just before tumbling into bed.
The result is wrinkles.
Actually I rather enjoy
ironing. I don't burn myself more than occasionally. The iron radiates enough
heat to tell my left hand exactly where it is. With just a bit of practice
it is easy to determine by touch whether the wrinkles have disappeared. And,
if I accidentally press in a crease, a spritz of water allows me to press
it out again.
I fill my steam iron
with distilled water to prevent stains from mineral deposits on the clothes.
Using a funnel, I put the water into a clean dish-washing-liquid bottle. The
nozzle lid on my recycled plastic bottle allows me to invert it over the iron's
water well before opening the nozzle and squeezing out enough water to fill
the iron. I can hear the well filling, but even if it overflows a bit, holding
the iron flat for a moment allows it to spit out the excess before I put it
down on the fabric.
This is the way blind
people wash our clothes and iron our clothes and take care of our families.
Is it any different from the way other people do the job? Not really. The
members of the National Federation of the Blind aren't amazing. There is nothing
magic about learning to adjust to blindness. It takes a bit of time and some
practice to train your fingers and ears to do the things that other people
do with sight, but it can be done. We know because we've done it.