The company started leaving last Friday. Peter was with me as I was doing post-guest cleaning and getting the house back to its regular self. Putting stuff away, like dishes and napkins. Going through the fridge and tossing the tiny bits of leftovers that got stored and saved. Laundering the towels, which mostly got folded up and stored in bins in the linen closet, waiting for the next guests. And washing the sheets, which got put back on the beds. Before the guests came, I also laundered the mattress pads and pillow protectors when getting the clean sheets on the day bed and trundle ready for guests. When I removed the sheets and pillow cases from the guest room bed, post guests, I thought, Hmmm. I should wash this mattress pad and pillow protectors, too.
That load was a washer-full, and I gathered up the pad and pillow cases and protectors and put them in the dryer by themselves, so there’d be enough space. Later, when I went back out to the laundry room to retrieve them and put the sheets in, I discovered that I’d put the big ol’ mattress pad in first, and then added the pillow protectors and cases. The mattress pad had rotated itself around and around in the dryer, trapping the pillow cases and protectors against the dryer door. They weren’t sopping wet, but they were damp. Really damp.
I carried them to the guest room which is also where I sew, and iron. I put up the ironing board (with its lovely new ironing board cover) and plugged in the iron. And spent the next few minutes doing the same thing I had done when I was nine or ten years old and learning to iron. Ironing pillowcases. JoAnne remembers doing that, too–our mom handing down her “taking care of the house” skill set.
A couple of the pillowcases were 100% cotton. One was really damp and ironed up easily and all and starchy-ish. The other one had dried completely and was badly wrinkled (as 100% cotton things sometimes are, especially those that are really old and don’t have the tiniest bit of man-made fibers in them). This one should be sprinkled, I thought.
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- I don’t remember when we got a clothes dryer, but for many, many of my growing-up years, Mother hung all the laundry outside on the clothesline in the backyard. When I got tall enough, I did that chore sometimes, too.
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- In order to look nice, many of the all-cotton things needed to be ironed. But first, they got sprinkled, to dampen them (Yes, I know, they had started out damp, then got bone dry, then got dampened again). This is a newer version of the sprinkle tops that were put on a water-filled bottle. Then, pre-ironing, one sprinkled water onto the garment, rolled it up, let it sit for a little while (sometimes in the fridge), and *then* the things got ironed. Seriously.
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- We had a clothesline like this when Jeremy was a baby. I hung clothes out sometimes, but I usually hung the diapers out, because they got sun-bleached, and looked and smelled nice.
And when the weather was rainy …
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- Mother had this indoor drying rack. It’s about 3 feet tall.
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- You grabbed the metal circle on the top and lifted it up. The three legs then slipped down to support the rack.
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- Then you pulled each dowel up and lowered it to horizontal. A metal piece kept it in place.
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- Here’s manufacturing information, from the top of it.
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- JoAnne took it when we were clearing out Mother and Daddy’s house, and she still finds it useful. Inside . . .
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- and outside, as well.
I didn’t actually sprinkle the wrinkled pillowcase. (I really did once have one of those sprinkler tops. I got it in a collection of gadgets and things that were a wedding gift. I haven’t seen it in years.) But I do have, in the sewing room closet, a spray bottle with rose-scented water in it. When things need ironing, I spray the wrinkles, and then iron them. It seems to work as well. And smells good.
Do your work willingly, as though you were serving the Lord himself, and not just your earthly master.
Colossians 3:23 (Contemporary English Version)
I’m going to try to remember that, next time I’m cleaning the bathrooms. Or cleaning up the kitchen. Or pulling weeds. And all the other things …
In a completely unrelated issue, here are photos from July 6, when Peter and the little boy next door made chalk pathways, and from August 5, when I was explaining to Peter how I knew it hadn’t rained at all here.
Late this afternoon, rain poured. There was lightning, and thunder. There is not a speck of chalk dust on the porch, the sidewalk, nor the driveway. Peter’s idea was that, if it did rain, he and Ford should chalk things up again, so we can continue to keep a running record of the un-rainfall rate around here.
Just one more jewels of memories for Peter to put in his Memory Treasure Chest ! How delightful to have those to recall in future recollections of all the precious moments with you and David.