Folding Bench Wash Wringer

Today washing clothes was as simple as putting clothes in the wash, adding some detergent; wait for half an hour, come back, then put your clothes into a dryer in the dryer, and then you will have clean laundry. Back then, especially around the 1890s, there were no electrical power washing machines or dryers to clean your clothes, it was all done by hand. It was an all day affair. Due to water being a precious commodity in earlier times it would take an estimated 15 to 20 trips to the well pump were required to fill the week’s wash tub, then the water would be heat on a stove overnight, then you can watch it next laundering clothes was a matter of wetting the garment and then using some method of flexing the fabric to loosen the dirt. Adding soap to the process served to keep the dirt in suspension so it didn’t redeposit itself back onto the fabric before being rinsed.

Then you would have to flex the fabric, this would have been done by rock, then later a ridged hard surface, such as a scrub board that was positioned in a tub of water to continuously wet and then manually flex the fabrics being washed. Then you would have to remove wash water by wringing out fabrics by hand. It was exhausting labor for the person doing it — usually a female homemaker. However, hand-wringing removed only about 50 percent of the moisture from the laundered fabric. After the washing, the clothes would be left on an outdoor clothes rack or indoor rack to air dry and finally ironed out.

This work was made easily due to the increased popularity of specialized machines such as this folding bench wash wringer you see on display. Made sometime in the 1890s, by an unknown manufacturer. It was enough to hold two tubs of water, one to wash your clothes and the other to rinse them, with the hand cranked wringer in the middle to push out the water from your clothes. It saved 50 percent of the time spent doing laundry and made it possible to wrap up the day by noon instead of requiring a full day to complete this arduous household task. Due to the popularity of this invention, many woodworking and wagon companies started making wringers until 15,000 to 20,000 of them were being produced in America each month.