Ah, Ecstasy: The Gratification of Washing and Ironing

My wife’s rediscovery of the joys of washing and ironing has reverberated in the breasts of several women readers.

My anxiety over what appeared to be her regression into woman’s pre-liberation condition is relieved by their accounts of what appears to be truly a mystical experience.

This happened, you may recall, when my wife acquired a large new service porch and a washing machine and dryer. As I have reported, she spent two weeks washing everything in the house, and appeared happy and fulfilled in doing it.

Years ago she discarded her old washing machine. It leaked, warping the asphalt tile floor of the service porch, which was too small. We had been taking our dirty things to the laundry ever since. It never occurred to me that she missed the old chore. But, of course, women have been washing clothes since they pounded them against rocks in the village stream. Perhaps the need for this ritual is embedded in their psyches.

“For all her feminist activities,” explains Selma Hefley of Murietta Hot Springs, “she still likes the sense of completion of washing and ironing. I understand only too well what she means.”

For many years, Hefley notes, she had no equipment but a washboard, the kitchen sink and an outdoor clothesline. “It was invigorating, not at all menial, to hang clean sheets, towels and white cotton T-shirts in the cool morning and remove them later in the day smelling from the sun that no man-made additive had yet duplicated. When I took down the sheets I’d pretend to be reefing in billowing spinnakers. . . .”

Hefley recalls an article about artist Betsy Bennett in American Artist magazine (June, 1990) that noted her predilection for clotheslines and wash in her work.

One painting shows “a clothesline heavy with a family’s wash.” Another shows a clothesline flapping with large white sheets, and it is titled ‘Territorial Imperative.’ Another, showing wash on a line in front of a New England lighthouse, is called ‘Wish Wash.’ ” “I know this sounds funny,” Bennett is quoted as saying, “but I think of hanging clothes as almost a religious experience.”

Ann R. Stasch of Northridge expresses a similar feeling. “I can remember all the way from a washtub and washboard, through the hand-wringers, to the modern appliance. I must say that, of all the household jobs, I find washing clothes the most satisfying. I’ve often wondered why that would be so, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it relates to a sort of miraculous renewal.”

Stasch says she is a home economics professor at Cal State Northridge, but has never read anything on the subject in home ec literature. “But I recognize the pleasure your wife has because I share it.”

“My first washing machine arrived in 1941,” writes Virginia H. Pratley of San Diego, “and was such a marvelous improvement over the old washtub and scrub board that I, too, decided on washing everything in sight. The novelty of this ‘labor saving’ device to our household was just too much to resist.”

Dorothy Crowley-Cavecche of Palos Verdes Estates suggests that washing clothes may be a way of expressing individual choice. “As in this Persian Gulf War. What power do we really have as individuals? We read in the paper what is being decided and what is expected of us. But we don’t have any real control over any of it. And so we do the only thing we can to lower our anxiety--take care of our immediate surroundings. I think your wife is doing just that.”

“Re your wife’s washing and ironing,” writes Ruth Merriam S- - - - (alas, her last name is illegible). “I know exactly how she feels. I too had a management job, a nice salary and a summer home in Maine. But it’s (washing and ironing) a very basic feeling, like baking bread (which I do twice a week).

“One’s hands are busy, but one’s brain can travel far and wide; and, best of all, there is evidence to show one’s effort; a row of beautifully ironed items! Taking care of the family-- purr, purr, purr .”

I have been watching for a diminution in my wife’s zeal. However, the washing machine hums almost every day. My wife hums at her ironing board. And my closet gleams with freshly washed and ironed shirts. To what God do I owe this unexpected blessing?

I wonder, though, whether my wife may have diminished the full flower of her renaissance by acquiring a dryer rather than a clothesline. Would she not be even happier if she could experience the thrill of hanging out sheets, working them in the sun and the wind like billowing spinnakers?

As I said when I first wrote about this phenomenon--if only one knew what they wanted.