Laundry

People today sometimes complain about doing laundry. I guess I understand why, but in all my years I have NEVER complained about doing the laundry. I remember how my mother did the wash back in the early years of her marriage and our childhood.
My parents would chop down a tree, cut it up and store it outside.
To heat water, the wood would have to be fed into the stove.
No running water, so my mother had to bring water into the house, bucket by bucket. She had to manually fill the buckets from the outdoor pump.
She had to pour the bucketfuls of water into large pots to heat on the stove. Some cold water was poured into a large galvanized washtub. Hot water from the pots on the stove was added to the cold until the temperature was right.
She had to wash the clothes piece by piece in the tub, scrubbing out stains and dirt on a handheld washboard. She changed the water when she needed to. After all the laundry was washed and rinsed, another repeat process, she had to empty the washtub and carry all the water out of the house to dump in an area away from the house, as no plumbing of any kind existed .
Probably the worst part, which she hated, was wringing out the clothes. Not til later did she own a "mangle" so she had to twist and squeeze each sheet, towel, and piece of clothing until they were manageable enough for her to pile up in her arms and take them outside to hang on the clothesline, and in all kinds of weather. I remember her hands being chapped and cracked from hanging wet clothes in cold weather.
When it was raining or snowing, she had to string clothesline around the kitchen stove so the clothes would dry.
When the clothes were dry enough , then came the job of ironing. In the days before permanent press, fabrics were mostly very wrinkly cotton, which had to be ironed.
To iron, she had to lay the ironing board-----she owned one, but it was flat, without legs---across the table. She had to have the stove hot, even in summer, so she could lay the cast iron, and heavy, iron on the stove to heat, iron the clothes until the iron cooled, and then repeat the process until the clothes were all ironed. Those were the days when washing clothes was done on Monday and ironing was on Tuesday. I resented those days because my mother was always tired and too busy and grumpy to give us her time. I know in my heart I never would have survived having to work like that.