Wash Day Blues

I'm participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday again, hosted by Colorado Lady. Go visit and see who else is posting their vintage thingies.

If you think you hate doing the washing and ironing today,
be glad you didn't have to do it in the so called good old days.

It was a chore then and here are the vintage thingies to prove it.

This is a vintage wooden wash stand with a wringer in the middle. You sat your tubs full of water on both sides and put your wet clothes through the wringers. You turned the crank on the side to make the wringers turn.
If you've ever seen the movie Far and Away, you will notice in the Oklahoma scene where she is washing clothes, she is using one of these.

Here is a close up of the wringers.

And here is a side picture of it all folded up for storage. Notice the little screen door hinge attached in the middle that fastened to the legs when you pulled them up for storage.

I think that's kind of neat how they did it.
If you click on the picture for a close up, you will notice patent
dates of Nov 10, 1901 and June 18, 1895.

And here is the most dreaded part of washing clothes.
The ironing the next day.
These are called Sad Irons, and no they're not called that
because you were sad it was Tuesday and you had to do the ironing.
They were called that because in 19th century dictionaries
one of the definitions for sad was heavy, solid or dense.
And let me tell you, these irons are heavy!
I believe the one on the right is the oldest one.
It is only one piece. The other one has a wooden
detachable handle so you can change sad irons
when the first one cooled down.
These were put on your cook stove to get hot.

Hope you enjoyed my wash day vintage thingies!
Do any of you remember using these?