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Illustration by Brooklin Holbrough
Recently, I easily manoeuvred my car into a tight spot, and my friend was impressed. I suggested that I only had two superpowers: Parallel parking and laundry!
My kids have dubbed me the “Laundry Goddess” because I have the knack for finding the right solution for any stain. (They even gave me a framed print of a bottle of laundry detergent stating, “Laundry is my real superpower.”) From spaghetti sauce to grass marks to ballpoint ink stains; whatever my family throws at me (or at their clothing to be more precise), I seem to be able to find a way to remove the evidence of the accidents of life from the clothes they wear.
It’s a skill I inherited from my mother. My mom wouldn’t admit it, but I think she loved doing the laundry.
Mom spent a lot of time in the dingy basement laundry room at the bottom of the concrete exit stairwell. The walls were never covered with plaster or drywall. The window never opened completely, and even if it had, my mom wasn’t tall enough to reach the clasp without dragging over a step stool or ladder. The floor was also concrete, eventually covered with an oddly shaped and weird, mustard-coloured piece of camouflage-patterned rug, which originally lay in the back of my boyfriend’s VW van.
The laundry room was mom’s domain. It was quiet, with only the shushing of the washing machine or the hum of the dryer to interrupt her. And since the dark, musty basement scared her children, it was unlikely that we ventured down for anything other than the most important problems. She would head down early in the morning, often still in her housecoat, to put in the first load of the day. We would find her there, leaning on the freezer, happily having a coffee and reading the newspaper or her library book.
The laundry room was a place where mom could control the outcome. Clothing came down dirty, was treated and scrubbed and treated again, and eventually came out clean and ready to be seen by the outside world. Mom tried all the latest stain-removing products, swearing by some and abandoning others; cursing when manufacturers discontinued her favourites and continuing to search for newer, better products. No Google search was available in the 1970s and ‘80s, so she scoured women’s magazines and read the women’s section of the local newspaper for new tips and tricks. She also had a group of like-minded friends who would trade stain-removal secrets.
The Laundry Goddess designation also extended back another generation to my mother’s mother. When I was a small child grandma still used a wringer washer. She filled the tub with water and added detergent and other cleaning agents such as bluing, which helped keep whites at their whitest. It also kept her little West Highland White Terrier as white as snow. I found this whitening process even more miraculous than the clean clothes. (In fact, I still use grandma’s bluing technique – now available in trendy purple shampoo – to keep my now-white hair shiny and bright.)
After the old washer agitated the laundry, grandma guided each item through the wringer, then drained the dirty water, refilled it with clean water and repeated the whole process. No wonder she was so slim: the laundry, like every other household chore, was so much more labour-intensive back then.
Both grandma and mom used the power of the sun and wind to complete the magic laundry process. The washing line had pride of place in the backyard, decorated with important accessories like clothespins and spacers, used to keep the line from sagging under the weight of the wet fabric. The Laundry Goddess would stand outside, pinning wet shirts from the shoulders or the hem, stretching socks over sock forms, and connecting towels with a shared clothespin. The most embarrassing days for me were when underwear and bras went on the line. Mom never seemed to understand why.
I don’t remember mom teaching me the intricacies of the laundry room. I learned to fold towels and small garments as a youngster. I spent many hours ironing clean cotton handkerchiefs and pillowcases. But the washing wasn’t part of my training. So when I left home and moved across the country, stain removal required an expensive long-distance phone call home. I had to quickly describe the offending stain and write down the recommended cleaning products and removal process. The cost of the long-distance phone bill was always top of mind, so we couldn’t waste time with chit-chat. Problem, diagnosis, suggested treatment, “Love you, bye.”
I no longer have a clothesline: delicates are hung from a dryer rack in the basement. My washer and dryer seem to have more settings than a jet plane, certainly many more than the machines used by my mom and grandma. I have made the switch from powder to liquid to laundry strips, and I have my own favourite stain fighters.
But every time I step into the laundry room and contemplate a particularly difficult stain, I thank the Laundry Goddesses who came before me for their wisdom and perseverance.
My superpower won’t change the world, but it changes the way my family faces each day. Each clean item of clothing is a calm centre in a chaotic world.
Now, who needs a lesson in parallel parking?
Anne Kendall lives in Elmira, Ont.