Читать книгу Convenient Houses, With Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper - Louis H. Gibson - Страница 18

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A LOW-COST LAUNDRY.—BLUE MONDAY.—BASEMENT LAUNDRY.—LOW-COST CONVENIENCES.—INEXPENSIVE LAUNDRY FITTINGS.—HOT AND COLD WATER ARRANGEMENTS.—A LABOR-SAVING LAUNDRY.—A PLACE TO DO FRUIT-CANNING.

The term “Blue Monday” probably originated on account of its being general wash-day, and a day in which everybody about the house undertook to do an impossible amount of work with limited resources.

Most of the washings in this country are done in the kitchen. The wash-boiler is on the stove, and the servant or mistress of the house, or both, attempt to wash and do their cooking without seriously disturbing the routine of meals. There is a fussiness about everything pertaining to that day, which creates an atmosphere of blueness which is proverbial. The steamy, crowded kitchen, the almost inevitable wetness or slipperiness, the great physical exertion required, the carrying of water, the lifting of tubs, are all uncomfortable, and the work is done at a great disadvantage. In an expensive house, where there is plenty of money, Monday is not so blue. Immunity is purchased. Possibly the clothes are sent from the house to be washed in somebody else’s kitchen; maybe to be worn by some one else before they are returned, and often to be injured or destroyed by the strong washing-mixtures and soaps, which are made to save rubbing. This kind of immunity is expensive. It is too expensive for the large majority of people. It is annoying to all alike.

Laundry work will sometime be done at a cost which will admit of people of moderate means having this work done at a public laundry. At present, the general laundry work of an ordinary household cannot be done in this way, on account of the expense.

The general public laundry, where arrangements are made to do the entire family washing at a low cost, is a complete solution of the Blue-Monday problem; but until the laundry is an accomplished fact, such work will be done at home, and a family laundry must be considered in house-building. It would be a very easy matter to arrange a laundry which would meet all the desired conditions, if we were to operate independent of cost, but the large majority of people are not independent in this way. If it were not a matter of cost, we would have an independent room for the laundry work, with porcelain tubs, and hot and cold water running into all of them; we could have a steam-drier, and many other things, which it is useless to mention here. It is the laundry of the moderate-cost house which interests the largest number of people.

We must have a place to do laundry work which is a compromise between the foggy kitchen and the laundry with porcelain tubs.

As houses are now built, the first floor is usually from two and a half to three feet above the grade. This affords abundant opportunity of getting a well-lighted basement. If the basement is dark, put more windows in it, and whitewash the walls and ceilings. Cement the floor. Put in a slop sink, and give it a trapped connection with the vault or sewer. Provide a pump over this sink to connect with the cistern. If the city water is soft, this will be used and no pump will be required. Then a laundry stove is to be provided. Thus we have everything ready for use without much labor, and certainly at a very low cost.

The basement should be light under any circumstances. The floor should be cemented, the joists should be whitewashed, so that the only additions necessary to make the laundry work easy are a laundry stove, a place to throw waste water, and a supply of hot and cold water. If one does not care to heat the water in the ordinary boiler, there is a very simple device for heating water which may be placed in any laundry. An open tank, which will hold two or three barrels of water, can be placed over the stove and next to the joist. From it a connection can be made with the laundry stove by means of lead and iron pipe. This pipe should start from the bottom of the tank and connect with an iron pipe which enters the stove, and passes around the inside of the fire-pot, then to the outside and connects with another lead pipe, which empties into the tank again on a level above the first opening. Thus the cold water would come from the bottom of the tank, through the stove where it would be heated, thence upward and into the tank. This would give a hot-water circulating connection, and in this way provide hot water for use in the laundry. This arrangement would require a low-cost force-pump to force the water to the tank. There are many kinds of these pumps, which are substantial and can be secured at a low cost. The pipe from the stove could be supplied with a compression cock from which the water could be drawn into the tubs. The better way would be to have an independent tank connection. Lead pipe was mentioned as being the pipe to use in making the connection with the iron pipe in the laundry stove. Galvanized iron pipe would answer every purpose and cost a little less. Where set tubs are not used, the water could be readily distributed by means of a hose pipe. If the above arrangement is too expensive, the stove only can be used for heating water.

Set tubs might be used instead of the ordinary wooden ones which were contemplated, and would save a good deal of labor, but the cost is something which all cannot afford. The arrangement described here can be reached by nearly every one of moderate means. It provides a place to throw slop water, and brings hot and cold water close at hand. It isolates the washing from the cooking, and the smell of washing from the whole house. It is very different from the conditions in most houses, where the water has to be carried from the backyard into the house, lifted to the stove, poured into the tubs, and afterward carried out, a bucket at a time, and emptied over the back fence, if the tub is not dragged out and emptied into the yard.

It is well in building a new house to have an outside cellar-way to facilitate the use of the laundry below. In such a case the clothes can be carried into the yard without being taken through the kitchen. There will be times when the weather will not permit taking the clothes outdoors. In very cold weather it should never be done. It is murderous for a woman to have to carry clothes from a hot, steamy laundry or kitchen at eighty degrees to the cold, dry air of the outside. There is no woman so strong that she can stand this. All the clothes can be readily dried in the basement. Here is presented another argument in favor of the laundry below. The washing can always be done at the appointed time in spite of the weather. When one goes into a large attic he is apt to say, “What a splendid place to dry clothes.” People who dry clothes in the attic usually do the washing in the kitchen.

A basement laundry is a cool place in summer and a warm one in winter. There is no better place for ironing in warm weather, for even with a fire the basement is always cool. Nor can there be a better place for canning fruit. The conveniences of plenty of water, a fire, and yet a cool place for doing this extremely laborious work, will be readily appreciated.