Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

Doing laundry for loved ones isn't a new thing for me. Being the oldest in a family of 10 children, I learned at a young age how to sort clothing on piles according to color or soiled condition. In a small concrete-floored room with a drain, to the side of the kitchen, my mother taught me how to wash clothes. In a tub we soaked laundry before we wrung it over into the wringer washer filled with hot, sudsy water. From there, the garments took two more trips through the wringer because my mother used twin tubs to rinse each load twice.

If the weather allowed, we hung the clothing outdoors to...