No Rinse Tide!

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cuffs054

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This am on RadioClassics just before "Johnny Dollar" they played a vintage Tide ad. It claimed to get your clothes "so clean, so white, so fresh smelling, it's like spring!" "Your clothes are fluffy!" The kicker was the pitch that you did not need to rinse out the wash water! "Tide suspends the dirt and flushes it down the drain. Your wringer or spin dryer does the rest. Clothes are ready to hang, no need to rinse." I bet somebody got a rash from his tidy whities.
 
I have magazine ads that state the same thing. I asked my mom about it decades ago when I found the old mags in a closet and she said it caused problems and did not work out. I guess they were thinking that a synthetic detergent, which was a new product at the time, did not have the fats of soaps so it would not cause adverse effects like yellowing when ironed. Syndets had their own problems and had ato be rinsed out of clothes.
 
I think

A member here has or had a partner that swore up and down that even modern detergents had to be rinsed twice No matter what!
Can't remember who it was?
 
Surf

I remember that in the 1950's Surf came out with a detergent that said that you didn't have to rinse after washing. "New Surf, the no rinse detergent." It came in a blue box with white, black and yellow on the front of the package. My mom used it and rinsed the clothes in both rinse tubs after washing eveything in the Maytag wringer. We knew someone who did what the box said and never rinsed a thing. Her whites were the grayist look whites that you would ever want to see. Pays to rinse. Gary
 
I listen to a lot of vintage radio shows and have heard the "no rinse" Tide commercials, too. It makes me itch just thinking about it. And can you imagine how much your clothes would reek of detergent? I love the scent of classic Tide powder, but yeesh!
 
One Supposes No Rinse Detergents

Were an advertising slap against all the rinsing required when using soap on wash day.

Didn't a member once post a story about knowing someone in his youth whose mother subscribed to this "no rinse" method? IIRC story went that one day the child was caught in the rain and his clothing began to ooze suds. *LOL*

Ewwwwwwwwwww!
 
I suppose the idea of not having to rinse was attractive to people using wringer washers. I knew several people with wringer machines when I was a kid, and none of them drained the wash water and refilled for a rinse. They usually had a big tub with rinse water in it. They'd swish the clothes around in it, then put them back through the wringer.

I also recall seeing a double machine wringer set-up, but never saw it in action. One machine was used to wash, the other to rinse.
 
No rinse?

I'm sure not buying it. I'm a rinseaholic. My washer has 1 spray and 4 fill rinses, and that's the way I like it. Handwashing glasses, I rinse 5 times.
 
We rinse our clothes a lot too. I like to see a crystal clear rinse. I think that the clothes smell better too. Just like fresh clean fabric.
If we don't rinse well, I get the itches pretty bad. That's one reason we like Persil, it rinses just fine within the normal double rinse cycle.
 
Why The No Rinse Claims

Tide and other detergents were taking advantage of a drought in New York and other areas during the 1950's. With calls to conserve water, detergent makers began advertising there was no need to rinse clothes after washing. Of course, those who suffered skin problems from leftover detergent residue would beg to differ. Once rain came back to the northeast, the water returned and the "no rinse" promotion outlived its usefulness.
 
just a guess...

Tide was introduced in 1946, a time when most home laundering was done with single tub wringers (no, I am not speaking from experience.) I would imagine all the "wash" was done in a tub of hot "soapy" water with something like Ivory Snow and then the tub was drained and filled with clean water for all the rinsing with a pile of wrung-out clothes in between. I'll bet a lot of "laundry-doers" (as opposed to housewives) looked at that no-rinsing claim and thought "wow, if it works I'll give it a try." I suppose common sense and the ton of automatics that followed resulted in dropping the no-rinse claim. I remember the back of the Tide box saying it was good for all kinds of cleaning especially sparkling dishes and glassware. No wonder women complained about dishpan hands, old Tide was pretty caustic stuff...thank God Madge came along huh?
 
Single Tub Wringer Washers

Before Tide P&G's most popular laundry soap was "Chipso", indeed it was one of if not the best selling laundry product for it's day only falling from grace when Tide was introduced and slowly at first but then as a stampede housewives chucked soaps for wash day.

Indeed P&G was initally worried that introducing Tide would kill off demand for Chipso, which it did but sales of the former more than compensated.

Aside from Chipso there were many brands of soap powder on the market, some names are still around today but as detergents. Fab, Duz, Rinso, Ivory Flakes (the powder came later), Lux Flakes, American Family, etc.

Ivory Snow and Flakes along with Lux were seen as "fine white laundry soaps" designed for the household's better wash such as fine linens, silks, etc. Brown bar soaps such as Fels, Kirkman's, and so forth where marketed as "heavy duty" and packed the power to deal with badly soiled laundry such as Johnny's mud caked jeans.

Anywho we digress:

When using a single wringer washer most housewives/laundry workers would ring the wash out of the machine and into either a stationary tub or sink filled with hot water for the first rinse. Some would have two tubs side by side (often with a wringer between) so to move wash from one rinsing tub to a second tub for another rinse and or to blue. This method allowed the hot soapy water in the wringer to be used for sucessive wash loads and not tie it up with having to rinse.

Depending upon how the family's finances stood rinsing was done manually and the wash either wrung by hand or second mangle/wringer was used (if the family could swing it) for rinsing. Of course depending upon how much wash there was to be done one could simply wash and mangle the lot by machine, hold it off to the side, drain the washer, refill with fresh water and start the rinsing. This would have been a very wasteful use of water to some though.

Problem is when using soap for washday you don't want that hot wrung wash sitting cooling waiting to be rinsed. If allowed to cool too long the all that soap/soil would settle down back into the fabric and that is not good.

Oh and the other reason for wringing right from the wash water is if the items were going to be boiled.

Boil washing is always done on pre-washed/soaked laundry for best results so the wash came out of the wringer, soaped and placed in the boiling pot.
 
The wringing method I remember was a pivoting wringer that would swing around to straddle the various rinse tubs, not a second wringer mounted on the rinse tubs. Any wringer washer I have ever seen has had a pivoting wringer.....The second and successive loads could wash while the person "running the washer" could rinse and wring the previous loads...and maybe I am using a "suthun" expression here.....but back then..."running the washer" meant just that...putting it through all of its functions...
 
Am Referring To

Women/laundresses who mainly used the washer for "washing" but did rinsing in separate tubs.

Several of my vintage commerical/domestic laundry manuals show wringers mounted either between tubs or those old deep concrete/porcelain wash sinks. Theory being laundry was wrung out of each water (as it should be) before going onto the next. Just as today's modern front loaders spin between each rinse.

Mind you if a housewife was also a mother with several daughters and or other sort of help rinsing in separate tubs whilst someone else tended to the washing machine could help speed though a mound of laundry.
 
Wringer washing and detergents

I helped my mom with the laundry staring around 1956. She had a Maytag gray ghost that my grandma bought new in 1936. We washed a load of clothes, wrung it into the first rinse tub, dashed that around, wrung that through and into the next rinse tub; did the same and then wrung into the clothesbasket and out to the clothes lines. While the rinsing, hanging was taking place, another load was washing,generally with more detergent added. It would take about 20 min. for this process to take place. As soon as the clothes were hung out on the lines, it was time then to start the process all over until the laundry was done.
She used a variety of detergents: Rinso Blue, Breeze(only if she needed a dishtowel),Surf,American Family Detergent,Blue Cheer, Oxyodol. No need to worry about low suds detergents. Wisk was new and didn't clean well (so she thought). She didn't use Tide very often because is was too expensive she said and way too sudsy.
We had salt water piped into the house; it was hard on washers so we had several: Maytag, Speed Queen, Montgomery Wards, Thor. I loved wash day on Sat. morning. It took 3 hours to do all of our laundry for 4 people, once a week. Gary
 

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