15. The Weekly Washing

We change out of uniform and into our mufti every day after school. We are not allowed to wear trousers, just skirts. We have indoor shoes and outdoor shoes. School shoes and mufti shoes. We wear uniform to go into town on Saturdays and uniform to go to church on Sundays. We have a special uniform for Sundays - on top of the skirt and sweater, we wear a woollen tunic top made out of the same fabric as our skirts. It's a bit like the army, or rather what I imagine the army to be, I don't know of course. But it's so regimented and strict. We are in 1980 now and we are not allowed to wear trousers. I barely ever wear a skirt when I'm at home. Not unless mummy wants me to.

Our uniform is dry clean only. It’s all wool. The skirts are cleaned for us once a term and the sweaters are taken and sent out for cleaning a couple of times. The school launders our bed sheets weekly - top to bottom - bottom to wash. That leaves our underclothes, nightdresses and mufti. We are responsible for washing and drying all of these on the weekend.

I have never washed my own clothes before. I have no idea if I’m doing a good job. My clothes don’t smell so it must be ok, I imagine. There are no washing machines. We wash our clothes in ordinary sinks, by hand, with washing powder that makes my skin burn and go red. Wash, rinse and then into the spin dryer and out to dry on the wooden wracks in the drying room. We are thirteen years old and fully responsible for our laundry. Nobody teaches us how to do it or actuality makes sure we do it but if we don’t, we’ll have dirty clothes and that’s disgusting.

I try my best to do a good job but it’s difficult to make sure everything is rinsed properly. I drench each item under the cold tap, rinsing and squeezing, many times, but the water never quite runs clear. It takes ages and my hands are raw by the end of it. There’s no way to have warm running water and filling the sink each time is silly, the sinks are far too small and it would take all day to get the soap out that way. Holding them under the running tap is the only way. However hard I try my clothes still feel a bit stiff and crunchy sometimes. I try not to cut corners, to do it properly, but it’s not that easy. X [name witheld] cuts corners. Actually she does more than cut corners and I’m not sure why. She pretends to wash her clothes but she just hangs them on the drying wracks dry and dirty, unwashed, and then gathers them all in when we do, pretending they have been washed. She thinks we don’t know. She smells of BO and she has terrible dandruff. No one says anything to her but we all talk about her behind her back. At the beginning of every term, we all pray not to have to share a dorm with her again. She’s nice really, she's warm and funny, I don’t know why she doesn’t wash her clothes and I don’t ask.

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When my children were in their teens I started teaching them how to do their laundry, with the aid of a washing machine of course. Mostly I still did it for them. It would probably have been good for them to take responsibility sooner. Or would it have made any difference? Now that they are in their twenties and they don’t have me there to do it for them, they both know how to do it and as far as I know they wear clean clothes. They didn’t need to learn when they were eleven. That little bit of hardship certainly didn’t do me any harm but I wonder no one showed us how to do it, or made sure we were using hand washing powder, instead of the machine stuff I used because I didn’t know any better.  This might even have been a valuable part of our education, learning how to take care of ourselves and our belongings. Over and over what I am left with is the lack of care, the lack of attention to the detail of our lives. My parents had no idea and didn't seem to care enough to ask.