This is the way we wash our clothes....

When I first moved into my second floor apartment I went to the laundromat to do a couple weeks' worth of laundry--no simple task. I hauled my basket of dirty laundry half a block to the parking garage, took the stairs to the proper floor (I NEVER remember what floor the car is on, so the elevator was not an option), loaded the car, spent about $15 to wash and dry, hauled the clothes back to the car, parked the car, took the elevator to street level, and dragged the basket to my apartment and up the stairs.
I thought, "This is nuts! too much work AND too much money."
So I spent $15 for this washboard (found at a local antique shop), $15 for the handwasher (the thing that looks like a metal plunger and which I found in a catalog) and another $15 for a drying rack. I figured the items would pay for themselves in a month and a half; and it would be a lot less work. And the bathtub became my "washtub." Convenient and fairly easy....after a run, I'd dump in a load of clothes, scrub them and let them soak while I had a few minutes quiet time, then drain the tub, rinse the laundry and hang it to dry. I work in an office, so I do not have to worry about heavily soiled clothes or heavy clothes (like jeans). To save my back, sometimes I'd hop in the tub barefoot and plunge; that way I didn't have to bend over the side of the tub. My dad, however, did NOT approve of his daughter doing laundry in the tub!

So when his wife saw this electric Wonder Washer on television, they bought it for me. It holds 1.8 gallons of water, enough for the amount of clothes that will fit on the drying rack I already had. I wonder why someone hasn't invented something like this before. Basically it's a 2-gallon blender, except the ingredients placed within are water, soap and laundry, instead of food; and it has an agitator instead of cutting blades. Instead of the typical blender handle, this bucket has a handle similar to those found on any two-gallon pail. It has two "speeds" -- standard and gentle. The "tub" lifts off the base (just like a blender jar). I filled the bucket from the tub faucet (my kitchen sink faucets have separate faucets for hot and cold, so I can't mix water temperatures from there), carefully placed the bucket back on the base, added a small amount of laundry and twisted the lid back on till it sealed. I then plugged it in, turned it on and it agitated the laundry for me, saving me the work of plunging clothes with the hand washer or rubbing them on the washboard.

Ahhh....even better. No hauling laundry to the laundromat, no collecting arm loads of quarters for the machines, AND no bending over the tub to plunge and scrub.

My phone rang and "Dad" appeared on my caller ID. I picked up the phone and said, "Hey Dad! This is perfect. Thank you so much!"