According to the writer of an 1870s cookbook, all good housekeepers chose Monday as washing day. This meant gathering all dirty clothes on Saturday night and separating coarse clothes from finer fabrics. Then the dirtiest clothing was separated from the less soiled.

Mrs. Gov. Hendricks of Indiana shared her recipe for washing fluid.

You’ll need one pound of sal-soda. This is a hydrated carbonate, a grayish-white powder used as a general cleanser that is also called soda ash and washing soda.

Another substance required is a half-pound of unslaked lime, a caustic substance produced by heating limestone. The addition of water to unslaked lime, at least in part, makes slaked lime.

A small lump of borax (water-soluble powder or crystals used as a cleanser) is also needed. No dimensions of a “small lump” are given. The size of 2 tablespoons of butter or a lump of sugar? It’s difficult to say though I’d tend toward the conservative guess for the first time and see how well it cleams.

Boil the sal-soda, unslaked lime, and borax in 5 quarts of water. When it cools, pour it into bottles for storage. One teacup is used for “a boiler of clothes.”

Mrs. Hendricks considered this a superior washing fluid.

If you ever wanted to make your own laundry detergent, here’s your chance!

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. S.v. “slaked lime.” Retrieved July 29 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/slaked+lime.

Compiled from Original Recipes. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, 1877.

“Lime (material),” Wikipedia.com, 2018/07/30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material).

Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc.