Another thing about the combos and the time that they were introduced was the make up of the regular family wash load. In the early 50s, December, 1952, to be exact, when the Duomatic apppeared on the scene after years of designing and testing, the washable fabrics were largely cottons and linens. Many of these garments held a lot of water and needed ironing whether they were line dried or not. Caring for the family laundry meant that a washer, whether an automatic or some other type, was almost a necessity but a dryer was not. Many, if not most homes built in the parts of the country where winter weather was worst had basements where clothes could be put on lines to dry, near the furnace, when they could not go outside, although I remember my mother putting on a coat and either a scarf or hat to hang laundry on the outside lines. In our new 1955 neighborhood, the first items to go up in back yards, along with fences, were the clotheslines posts. I remember my father's installation was far superior to one neighbor's. But the permanent press fabrics that made dryer-drying an important part of the process were not yet here. Many wives and mothers did not work outside of the home so they were not so pressed for time to line dry laundry. It was interesting to watch over a period of about 10 years as families grew and incomes increased, women who had said that they did not want or need a dryer started getting them and using them. In some houses with limited room for the washer upstairs and no basement, having a dryer meant buying a combo. The morning chats while hanging out the loads to dry and then the afternoon conversations as the clothes were taken in disappeared. The other thing that disappeared was the frantic rush to grab the clothes in off the lines if a storm came up. If one neighbor was missing from this frantic fandango, children were sent next door to spread the alarm.
The combos fought a standing tradition that developed before wringer washers and it was that the laundry was all done on one day of the week. It made sense when you had to draw water or pump the water, then heat it and set up rinse tubs. With the combos, you could wash and dry every day without having to be so involved with every step so that a load could be started and pretty much left alone for one and a half to two hours. The very efficient 36 inch wide Duomatics could dry a load in 45 minutes on average, although areas of the country with warmer ground water found that time increased when using the electric condenser models. As with any washing operation that involves using a dryer, it was most efficient to start by laundering lighter weight loads first so that when the sheets and shirts or similar weight items were through washing, they could go into a separate dryer and be done by the time the second load was ready to come out of the washer. In the combos, starting with lighter weight fabric loads enabled the operator to get more loads done faster and possibly find it more convenient to be there when a load finished that either needed immediate folding or putting on hangers to look best. Later loads could be heavier things like towels that would tie up the machine for longer periods of time in the afternoon when school children, shopping and meal preparation were the primary time consuming activities.
