How did people wash their clothes back in the day?

Answer 1

Liquid soaps had been invented and used by the Romans, before the Middle Ages started. Medieval people continued to use them with water to wash their clothes. The soap makers' guild was one of the oldest, and existed from the sixth century or earlier.

Answer 2

Simple, they didn't clean them. Outer clothing was never cleaned and undergarments were made of linen and were cleaned every so often. To clean something was very hard. It required heating buckets and buckets of water, to use a harsh soap made of lye, ashes, and tallow, using a big flat end paddle to stir the clothing, then to wring it out by hand and then hang the clothing. This could 2-3 days to get it all done. It was very hard, so it wasn't done very often. Everyone smelled of wood smoke and tallow.

Answer 3

The women would collect water from whatever source was available - a river, a lake, a well - and heat it up. They would then place the clothes in the water and soak them a bit. Each piece of clothing would be handscrubbed with soap (usually lye), sometimes on a rough piece of wood or shaped metal called a washboard. The clothes were then wrung out by hand and laid out on hedges or hung on clotheslines to dry.

Cleaning the clothing of an entire family was often a full day of hard physical labor for the females of the household.

Answer 4

To do a washing a big pot of water had to be heated and the soap used was a lye/ash/fat to stir into the big pot hot water. Big paddles were used to stir in the clothing and get them "beaten". Ladies would wring out the clothing and then hang it. Often their hands were raw and red due to the lye.

Answer 5

People often used wee in a bucket to wash there clothes and they did it near a river so they can get more wee if they need to

Many people weed in rivers so they washed there

Answer 6

They Washed About 2 Times A Year Either In A Basin Or A Bit Of Water They Could Find Maybe From A River OR Somewhere Else Like That.