Miscellaneous Definitions — accessories, trims, tools and general fashion terms from Apparel Search
Laundry can be items of clothing and other textiles that require washing, and it can be the act of washing clothing and textiles. The double meaning is built into daily life: laundry is the basket of clothes waiting, the process that cleans them, the room or business where the cleaning happens, and the finished load that returns. Behind that simple word stands one of the oldest and most labor-heavy tasks of domestic and commercial life.
Laundry was probably first done by immersing cloth in streams and letting the stream carry away the materials causing stains and smells. In many Third-World countries and rural regions, laundry may still be done this way. Agitation helps remove the dirt, so the laundry is often rubbed, twisted, or slapped against flat rocks.
Various chemicals may be used increase the solvent power of water, such as the compounds in soaproot or yucca-root used by Native American tribes. Soap, a compound of lye, from wood-ash, and fat, is an ancient and very common laundry aid. However, modern washing machines typically use powdered or liquid detergent in place of soap.
When there were no streams to use for laundry, laundry was done in water-tight vats or vessels. Sometimes large metal cauldrons were filled with fresh water and heated over a fire; boiling water was even more effective than cold in removing dirt. The washboard, a corrugated slab of a hard material such as metal, replaced rocks as a surface for loosening soil.
Once clean, the clothes were wrung out -- twisted to remove most of the water. Then they were hung up on poles or clotheslines to dry, or sometimes just spread out on clean grass.
The Industrial Revolution completely transformed laundry technology.
First came the mangle, in the 18th century -- two long rollers in a frame and a crank to revolve them. A laundry-worker took sopping wet clothing and cranked it through the mangle, compressing the cloth and expelling the excess water. The mangle was much quicker than hand twisting.
In the early 20th century inventors further mechanized the laundry process with various washing machines. Typically, these machines used an electrically-powered agitator to replace tedious hand rubbing against a washboard. The earliest machines were simply a tub on legs, with a hand-operated mangle on top. Later the mangle too was electrically powered, then replaced by a perforated double tub, which spun out the excess water in a spin cycle.
Laundry drying was also mechanized, with dryers. Dryers were also spinning perforated tubs, but they blew heated air rather than water.
Washing machines and dryers are now fixtures in homes around the world. Apartment buildings and dormitories often have laundry rooms, where residents share washing machines and dryers. Usually the machines are set to run only when coins in appropriate amounts are inserted in a coin-slot. Those without home machines or access to laundry rooms must either wash their clothes by hand, visit a commercial laundromat.
Use a car as agitator. If clothes are put in a water-tight container, with soap or detergent, and the container is placed in the trunk of a car or the bed of a pick-up truck, a few hours of stop-and-start driving or a stretch of bumpy road will agitate nicely. The clothes may then be rinsed and dried. This method is said to be used by some ranchers in the Western part of the United States.
Learn more about washing clothing.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/laundry). 10/18/04 |
Few everyday words carry as many related meanings as laundry. It names the soiled clothes and household textiles themselves, the process of washing them, the room in a house set aside for the work, and the commercial business that washes for others. The meanings hang together because, for most of history, laundry was not an event but a standing condition of a household: there was always a load accumulating, a wash day on the calendar, and a place — yard, riverbank, wash house or utility room — where the work belonged. The definition preserves all of it, because the trade uses the word in every sense: a hotel sends out its laundry, a laundry (the business) processes it, and a worker does the laundry (the task) in the laundry (the room).
The history of laundry is a history of labor. Laundry was probably first done by immersing cloth in water and agitating it — beating it against rocks, trampling it, rubbing it on rough surfaces — to loosen dirt that plain soaking leaves behind. Soap and alkaline helpers such as ash lye strengthened the wash; washboards gave the rubbing a portable surface; tubs and coppers brought heated water to the work. Wash day consumed a full day of heavy physical labor in a pre-machine household: carrying water, heating it, soaking, scrubbing, rinsing, wringing and hanging, with starching and ironing still to follow. The sequence survived into living memory in many places, and its weight explains why laundry was among the first domestic tasks to be mechanized and among the first to be sent out to paid specialists.
The washing machine moved the heaviest steps — agitation, rinsing and water extraction — into an appliance, and the tumble dryer removed the weather from drying, but the surrounding system of laundry remained: sorting by color, fiber and soil; choosing water temperature and detergent; treating stains before they are set by heat; and following the care labels that govern each garment. Commercial laundries industrialized the same steps with washer-extractors that wash and spin in one drum, tunnel washers that move linen continuously through stages, and presses and finishers that return hotel and hospital textiles at a scale no household machine approaches. Self-service laundries — laundromats — rent the machines by the load, and wash-and-fold services sell the labor as well.
In the apparel industry, laundry also has a manufacturing sense: garments are laundered before sale to soften them, preshrink them or create finishes — stone washing and enzyme washing of denim are laundry processes performed on new clothes. Whether the word means a household load, a hotel's linen contract or a denim finish, the core definition is constant: the washing of clothing and textiles, and the textiles that pass through that washing, from the oldest beaten cloth in a stream to a tunnel washer's hourly tonnage.
Laundry means the items of clothing and other textiles that require washing, and also the act of washing clothing and textiles. Context tells which sense is meant: a pile of laundry is the load; doing laundry is the work.
Laundry was probably first done by immersing clothing in water and beating or rubbing it to work dirt loose. Rivers, streams and wash stones served as the first laundries long before tubs, washboards and machines.
A commercial laundry is a business that washes textiles in quantity — for hotels, hospitals, restaurants and institutions, and for households by the load. The term laundry also names the premises where washing is done, as in a self-service laundry.