The 50s – Washing, hot water and other problems

(DE) “Oomaa!”, I cry out in panic, as always, as I pass the front door of the rental apartment block where we live. “I have to go to the loo! Quick!”, I needlessly add to the explanation. Unnecessarily, because my grandma knows what to do. Open the front door and open the toilet door so that I can fly through. After all, we live on the second floor,, and that is for a Kindergarten child quite far. Normally it works like clockwork. But this time Grandma’s voice comes from the basement: “Go upstairs; the door is open. I’ll come right away.”

Washing day in the 50s

So, that’s it! My well-being is gone, and my mood darkens immediately. Today is the day again! I hate these days! In the morning, the world is still all right, and then you come home at noon, and it is washing day! That means there is no real food but pancakes. Everyone, but really everyone involved, is annoyed until late in the evening. And nobody wants to hear, see or feel anything from the child.

Out of the way, here comes the laundry!

What was unpleasant for me as a child in the 50s was, of course, very stressful for the housewives of that time. Washing laundry was a hard job. To do the family’s laundry, they had to put their name on a list to use the laundry room in the basement on a certain day and could then do their laundry on that day; from a handkerchief to the bed linen, all the washing, everything, had to be washed in large troughs.

The water in the washing kettles was heated with wood and coal. Then, for example, the sheets were taken out of the boiling water with huge wooden tongs, scrubbed and brushed to get the dirt out of the fabric and finally, they were placed in other water containers for rinsing. Finally, the laundry was wrung out by hand and carried in baskets to the backyard, where it could be dried on clothes rails. In winter or in rainy weather, the women dragged the heavy baskets to the attic on the 3rd floor, where there were also clotheslines. No wonder the women were very grumpy on washing days.

Washing could be dangerous for small children!

For children, washing clothes was not only a mood killer but could sometimes also be very dangerous. One of my aunts, like other young mothers, boiled her baby’s nappies in the flat every day. After all, there were only cloth nappies. She put the tub with the hot soapy water, in which the nappies were soaked, on the floor. When her older son, still a baby, toddled backwards, he fell into the hot soapy water and suffered severe burns. He did not survive. The shock was deep in the family and among neighbours. Thank God I am not aware of another such tragic accident.

So the creepy and by everyone-hated laundry room in the basement had its good points. Children were out of danger. And at the end of the day, you could perhaps even climb into the washing trough yourself to take a bath.

A toilet of one's own - what a luxury!

After all, many flats at that time did not have a bathroom. My grandmother’s rental flat, today you would call it a council flat, was very modern,, because, conveniently, there was a toilet in the flat. This could not be taken for granted. In many apartment buildings, the inhabitants of one or two floors shared a toilet in the hallway. This was still the case with my great-grandmother in Augsburg in the 60s.

A bathroom of one's own - a dream!

Four grown-ups and a baby in a very small flat without a bathroom. Nobody cared. In the 50s, people in my social class did not even dream of having their own bathroom. We were not directly poor, but simply average. The apartment building we lived in was built in the 30s. My grandmother had been a widow since 1933 with 3 children, the youngest of them, my mother, was born in 1933. When I was born in 1953 as an illegitimate child, I lived with my grandmother and her three children in her small flat. It consisted of a kitchen-living room, a small bedroom and an even smaller room behind the kitchen. The only luxury was the toilet, but of course without a hand basin.

Granny tinkering with the only water source in her small flat.

The only water source in the flat was a cast-iron sink in the kitchen. There was only cold water, but our wood and coal-fired cooker had a built-in water tub from which hot water could be drawn when the cooker was heated.

We had a very sophisticated bathroom substitute, a square stool to sit on. When it was opened, an enamelled insert became visible, where warm water could be poured and which even contained an integrated soap dish. This “bathroom” could be used as a seat when closed, or it could be moved to another room to maintain privacy for personal hygiene. Most of the time, however, family members washed themselves in the kitchen and shooed the rest of the family out of the kitchen where they had to stay until the person had finished their personal hygiene routine.

Body and laundry care without a bathroom in the 50s was time-consuming and had to be planned specifically.

I wonder whether it is justified to smile mildly and pitifully at these circumstances. Yes, it was cumbersome and did not meet our current hygiene standards. But let us have a look at the dark side of modern development.

With comfort came waste.

Frequent showering or bathing is harmful to the skin, and the overall water consumption is much higher than in the 50s. People had fewer clothes, which were also washed less often, precisely because of the awkwardness.

People took off their street clothes when they came home. This way, the textiles were protected and did not have to be washed as often. Brushing out street clothes and airing the clothes was a common cleaning method.

However, when polyester shirts became fashionable and synthetic textiles found their way into the wardrobes, brushing and airing were no longer an option. The clothes developed unpleasant odours when you sweated and, due to their texture, made you sweat a lot.

Today we wear more pleasant materials, but we have gotten used to piling up masses of cheap disposable clothes in our wardrobes.

Washing is no longer a real issue anyway, so hardly anyone alternates between street clothes, house clothes and Sunday clothes to protect clothes. And even the apron is no longer a matter of course in the kitchen. Being dressed beautifully and fashionably in all situations has a priority.

Frequent washing? No problem! Washed-out T-shirts? Throw them away! Every season, the colours and the latest cuts change anyway. Who still wears their favourite clothes for years?

All the environmental and humanitarian problems caused by the production and discarding of cheap disposable fashion are the price of this consumer behaviour.

I wonder if we shouldn’t rethink some of the rituals of the 50s – of course, without returning to the sinister laundry room. (TA)