Victorian Farm; BBC TV

My 'Victorian Book' book came this morning :j and I couldn't resist a dip into it.

The Laundry section makes very interesting reading - Ruth says 'When I am not living on a Victorian Farm, I put no powder or liquid into my wash at all.'

She says everything comes out amazingly clean and, contrary to her expectations, she still hasn't needed to give it any sort of 'blitz' after 3 1/2 years. I'm very inclined to try this, I like the idea of less chemicals in my house and in the environment and of course, more pennies for me and less for Messrs Proctor, Gamble etc

I normally use liquid Ariel in my washing machine but on several occasions when I've been busy and accidentally forgotten to put the container containing the liquid into the machine before setting it in motion my washing has run a cycle without any soap. The washing looked clean when it came out and smelly things like socks, sweaty armpits, etc. have smelt fresh and clean. So I imagine a no-soap wash would be OK for articles that are not heavily soiled. I don't know whether the actual water temperature makes any difference to getting the washing clean. I usuually use 30 degrees, but next time I launder sheets I might try a higher temperature wash with no soap and see if I can notice any difference in their cleanness afterwards. I suspect that an initial soak might be one of the keys to getting rid of the dirt without using soap. I know that during the war when washing soap was in short supply, my mother often just soaked the washing in hot water and gave it a good old swirl around before running it through the mangle.

thriftlady wrote: »

Do you mean she uses no soap of any kind Rosieben ? Does the really work?

Yes, she advocates using much less powder/liquid than the manufacturers recommend (she's a real Old Styler!) 'or you may want to be brave like me' ...

... 'the actual cleaning is done by your washing machine bashing the clothes around in water. Its the water being forced through the fibres that knocks the dirt out.' she reckons that over time the clothes softens because there's no soap residue in the fibres.

I'm very intrigued to try this. On the programme she used stain remover direct onto the stain, not in the wash, wonder if she does that at home? I'm not sure how else you would deal with heavily stained clothes if you have, say, a mechanic or a couple of dirt-loving kids (like my ds was )

there are recipes in the book too including some for leftovers.... pheasant hash anyone?

I love this book

AWH THANKS ROSIE that looks interesting, will go and hava look...

That's interesting jinny. Maybe I'll try putting our washing into soak for a few hours after one of us has had a bath - (do you think it would mind sharing with a little Radox?) and then try the rinse wash in the washing machine. When we were first married and didn't have a washing machine I used to soak/wash and rinse all our towels, sheets and pillow cases in the bath and then put them in the spin dryer. They always looked clean enough to me, although they were mostly coloured items and perhaps any residual dirty stains might have been more obvious if all the laundry had been white. We've recently bought a new washing machine which heats the water from cold, so I'm not sure how much electricity we would save (can anybody provide an estimate? but it's worth trying if one has the time to use this method.