![]() ![]() Such a list plays an important role in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (called a "washing-bill"): While the printed list seems to have arisen in the late Victorian era, the general concept is much older. Also, I had to record them on the “laundry list” - a printed form that you filled out with the laundry mark and the quantity next to the appropriate category on the laundry list. So I had to learn many distinctions as I marked and sorted the clothes, sheets, towels, etc. Clothing dyes are much more color-fast now than they were then, and modern synthetic fabrics are much less fussy about water temperature than traditional cotton, linen and wool. The marking was to make sure the laundry got back to the right people, and the sorting was to make sure the right stuff got cleaned together in the big washing machines. a tediously or unnecessarily lengthy list of items) was born from its literal forebear, which guaranteed efficiency and the return of freshly-laundered undergarments but not necessarily a basketful of laughs.īack then, before permanent press and abundant home washers, many people sent their clothes to a commercial laundry, where it was my job to mark it and sort it. No, it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see how our modern proverbial laundry list (ie. ![]() Laundry lists of yore certainly wouldn’t have made it onto today’s Buzzfeed – the king of entertaining internet lists. Enlightening and evocative as the article is - with images of counterpanes and half-pairs, women’s blouses and priests’ collars, it’s not difficult to imagine how such lists of clothing items could soon become deadly in their length and detail, especially to those reading or creating them for a living. The late Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen wrote a colorful little piece about his experience of working for the family laundry business when he was a young teenager. (Although were there really people laundering the clothes of the military back in those days?) Wiki.answers believes the laundry list proper originated in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century when many sent their laundry out to be cleaned. ![]() According to Wiki.answers, this practice might date back to as early as the Civil War, when soldiers would make a list of their items to be laundered. The illustration above is of a laundry list filled in by guests of New York’s Hotel Astor, back in the day when it cost a mere 5 cents to launder a handkerchief. … it seems that once folks did indeed have to make inventories of their clothes before sending them to be laundered. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |