Laundry Day

Laundry day should have been yesterday, the day I decreed it should be, like mom on Saturday farm mornings. 

when she rounded up the kids, mostly the girls, to fill the ringer washing machine and big aluminum rinse tubs 

for the first load of laundry. The laundry of five, then six, then seven and more kids. Of course my parents did start off with one, 

then two then three and four. Laundry day was a lot of work 

with a lot of moaning and groaning and laughter, long before 

Pampers and Huggies. It was a time of cloth diapers, safety pins and

rubber pants to keep the little pink bottoms dry. Rinsing out the soft 

baby poo a task no one relished. No wrapping the diaper up and throwing 

it in the outside garbage for #2 and the bathroom garbage for #1. 

My laundry day is no longer filled with the laughter and living 

of a young and growing family. Memories frayed like old clothes

of good, hard working times, with gratitude that I don’t have 

stinky cloth diapers to wash or heavy rinse tubs to fill.

“In the 1960’s, my mother used to rinse cloth dirty diapers in 

the toilet, squeezed the water out and put them in the diaper pail."

~ Author unknown, Facebook quote