I Don't Rinse MY Wash

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Saturday leg pullin'

The stay at home moms of the 50's were all on Valium. Thus, they could laugh thru the wash cycle, forget the rinse, and howl while the family got the itch.

Heehaw !!! How wish we had Valium now, Brown Cow
 
I'm guessing this was done in the 40s where most households had wringer washers. Rinsing was a chore back then and I guess this was one of the ploys P&G used to get people to buy their stuff. Well, I guess if you wrung out clothes still full of detergent, you wouldn't need a whole lot in the wash water next time.
 
It was a short lived ad campaign. It was meant to emphasize that a synthetic detergent like Tide did not leave dulling soap film on clothes. I guess the first time a kid took a good wizz in a diaper and had suds pouring out the waist and leg openings of the rubber pants was about the end of it. It was either the Tide in the washer or the beer in the bottle.
 
Twin tub washing vs. automatic washing

I've always wondered if you had a twin-tub or a wringer and a rinse tub washer, and you hung clothes out to dry, could you process more clothes?

Example:
Let's say, you have a twin-tub (washer/spinner)
Wash, 10 minutes. Transfer to rinse/spin tub and while that's going, you put in the second batch. I'm guessing that takes about another 10 minutes to do.

Take the damp clothes out of the spinner, put the clothes in the washer into the spinner, start it up. Put a new batch (Load #3) of dirty clothes into the washer. Hang load #1 on the line.

So you've done 3 loads of laundry in about 40 minutes.

The automatic way (with a dryer).
The automatic takes about 30 minutes to do one load of laundry and the dryer may take even longer considering how fast the washer spins. That being said, 2 loads of laundry takes about 2 hours vs. the 1 hour it took to do it in the twinnie.

But the tradeoff is the time doing actual work. A few minutes out of the day to load/unload and start the machines. Oh the drudgery!
 
I don't freak when there's a bit of suds in the final rinse w/ my front-loader; after all, I have soft water and you could do 10 rinses and there would still be some bubble action. But NOT RINSING CLOTHES AT ALL? Icky. Sticky. Rash-around-the-collar.
 
Jason, if you're not using a dryer, a wringer is actually *much* faster than using an automatic. Though, as you point out, the Catch 22 is that for the entire given period of time, you must pretty much be present and actively engaged.
 
No matter what detergent you're using, rinsing is ALWAYS necessary! I can just feel the itching now, yuk!

I do think using a twin-tub or wringer would be less time-consuming as far as getting a lot of laundry done in a certain period of time. Although if you use one like I did and change the water after each wash, it might take longer than an automatic!
 
Not Rinsing Laundry:

Brought this topic up several months back after seeing a similar if not the same advert on eBay. Apparently many women did not rinse their laundry, Tide or no Tide. It seemed to be common for women using wringers, twin tubs or any other non-automatic washers, and guess it was done to save steps/time.

Mind you a high speed spin, say of the HooverMatic TT's would remove quite allot of the suds and muck residue, but still.

Automatic verus Non-Automatic Washing,

As the owner of a HooverMatic, am here to tell you that yes, one can get more laundry done faster with a TT, especially when compared to European front loaders with their long cycles. However TT washing is much more labour intensive, especially if one chooses to use deep rinses instead of just spray rinses. If one chooses to change the wash and rinse water between loads, rack up the labour another notch.

If one had two twin tub/spinner washers things would fly by. Just keep items moving down the line as it were.

Wash in one tub,
Transfer to spinner and spin
Take from spinner and put laundry in second wash tub for rinsing, rinse.
Transfer laundry to second spinner and spin dry.

One could add spray rinses to either spin cycle.

Mind you find the "old" method of gradually soaking laundry in a Hoover TT spinner, then spinning VERY good at rinsing. I know this because after repeating the process enough times so the water coming out of the spinner is clear, transfering laundry to a rinse tub produces no sudsing or detergent residue transfer into the water; it remains clear.

L.
 
I agree with all of ye

Since you can start the agitation immediately with non-automatics, by the time the water is in, some loads are ready for rinsing. If your clothes are not really soiled or stained, you can literally fly through piles of laundry with TT's & wringers. The key to real speed with a wringer is to use another machine for rinsing rather than hand rinsing in tubs.

If you're going out and need your favorite whatever--NOW--there is nothing faster than the Hoover, both in the washing and high speed spinning which makes drying a snap.
 
Faster than a Speeding Bullet

Jason,
Mom used to do the wash for a family of seven, once a week, in a wringer washer. If she stuck to it she would finish in about 5 hours, with 1 tub of water in the washer and 1 for the rinse. Parts of the year, we could get water from the cistern, with a hand pump. It had to be heated on the wood stove.
The rest of the time, water was hauled from town in 10 gallon milk cans.
My mother had a hard time recovering from water deprivation. It was four years after getting running water before she could accept an automatic.
She was all over the dryer, like white on rice. She bought a BOL Kenmore in 1963. The weight of the water, left in the clothes from the wringer, took its toll on the dryer. It ate belts like crazy and the heating element was replaced twice in 4 years. The fan bearing roared and vibrated like a frieght train.
Using the dryer, exclusively, to dry the family wash could take up to three days, while washing it took only 5 or 6 hours.
I bought a used 59 Filter Flo and a 49 Hamilton (worthless as a dryer, great as a steamer) in high school and was able to transition her to an automatic, by saving the wash water and hand pouring it in the machine for the next load. I found a newer GE V-12 with a suds saver to keep her from insisting on going back. To make sure she didn't regress, I disabled the Maytag wringer washer.
Kelly
 
You can do more laundry in a wringer

Hi, It is true, you can do more wash in a wringer quickly and it is also true that you must be there to do it as opposed to turning a knob and you are done. Here is what I do when I use my ABC wringer. Fill the machine with water, soap, clothes and start the agitator. While the first load is washing, fill both rinse tubs. By the time both tubs are full and the sheets( first load)is finished, wring the sheets into the first rinse. Start the second load and rinse once, twice and hang out on the line. By the time the first load is rinsed twice and hung on the line, the second load is ready for the same process.
It does take longer in the dryer though if you have used a wringer instead of an automatic. Early Surf was toted to be the no rinse detergent. I had a friend in school and his mom used no rinse Surf. We all loved it when it rained. lol Lots of suds on his clothes and it didn't smell very good when that happened either. Have fun. Gary
 
just a side note..

We had Greg;s Maytag wringer out last weekend and did a wash, and when all was washed and wrung we tossed those clothes in the '58 unimatic for a spin, just to see what was still in them... it was ALOT!
Not rinsing is nasty...I use the permanant press cycle on my A608 for towels because it rinses twice!
 
Yes-I can remember that Tide ad in a magazine-like from the late forties-early 50's.Also in one of the Tide ads-mentioned you could use Tide for your dishes and not rinse---Hope the bathrooms are clear after dinner!!You may have a mess to clean up.I am for rinsing.Detergents are not compatible with the human digestive tract-and for clothes--scratch--SCRATCH!!!And those sudsy diapers!!The pee rinse cycle!!
 
ah - but

how many folks don't rinse their dishes after washing them by hand - just lay them in the rack? Read an article in a British consumer journal - said the amount of detergent left on the glasses, etc. was negligible - and the dirt was held in suspension.
Grosses me out - I always rinse out a glass a friend's houses who "save water" before using it - and that water sure comes out sudsy.
Compared to soap, however, yes - I bet this stuff didn't need nearly as much rinsing. Still, the "itch" factor and the smell of collected and sundry...after a few wash days I bet the clothes smelled just like those old rag kitchen mops...
 
You can do a lot of laundry in a shorter amount of time with a wringer and rinse tubs, but the brief scenarios given here do not hold up through a whole family wash. One person cannot run at that pace for long. In wringer washer situations I have seen, there was at least one child helping. The physical energy involved in the rinsing and wringing, the carrying the clothes, usually upstairs and outside, the hanging of heavy wet laundry on the line in the heat of summer and the windy cold of winter when you had to stop and bundle up and clothes freeze-dried on the line was brutal. So the pace slowed and had to when you considered the progressively more heavily soiled items, cooling wash water, having to change the rinse water, etc. And like Kelly said, many families had to heat the wash water on the stove, in my paternal grandmother's case a kerosene one in the basement with 3 burners lit under the boiler. When the water boiled, it was dipped out with a pail until it reached a low enough level that my grandmother would have her husband or my mom, when we were visiting, help her hoist it by the handles and pour it into the washer. That was dangerous as well as strenuous. By that time, they lived in the city so at least a hose from a faucet was used to fill the boiler and the rinse tubs. Since her husband was a cheap bastard, her rinse tubs were 3 galvanized tubs on an L shaped platform and at the end of wash day, they either had to be bailed out partways with a pail or tipped gradually to empty into the floor drain. That wet floor sure helped keep the basement humid, even with the Dorothy Gale storm doors open so that laundry could be carried out to the lines. Of course in Iowa winters, you could not use the doors, so if laundry was put on the lines outside, it had to be carried up the narrow steps, through the dining room and out through the kitchen door, if there was not too much snow. Otherwise, lines were strung all over the basement which was not large. I guess for just the two of them, it was not so much of a problem. One of the reasons that mom gave for not needing a dryer was that she had a basement in which to hang clothes in bad weather. I remember that we could not roller skate in the basement if she had laundry hanging down there and if it was rainy and cold like so many winter days in Georgia are, bad weather for skating outside was bad weather for drying outside.

And food. Laundry was not begun until the breakfast dishes and pans were washed. Lunch was something like sandwiches while watching the weather and checking for birds. I remember the look on their faces when 2 freshly laundered sheets had been hit with purple berry bird poop after all of the laundry had been done and all of the equipment was rinsed out and dried.

In surveys of women in this country, they always ranked the washing machine as the most important labor saving invention. I would bet that the electric wringer washer was as big or bigger a step in saving time and labor as the automatic was when it was introduced later for the person doing laundry. It's also why so many of the Bendix Home Laundry automatics sold when they were the only automatic, even though they did not wash as well as a good wringer washer.
 
hands down winner

Tom, that is so right - I think the washing part, tho' difficult and strenous, is nothing compared to the lifting soaking wet clothes and moving boiling or ice-cold water buckets all over the place.
If I had to chose between a washer "just" a spin dryer, I'd take the spin dryer.
 
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