When our 78 year old neighbour Dina was a girl, la gente andava giù al fiume a fare il bucato (people went down to the river to do their washing). The freshly washed clothes were left stretched out on big rocks to dry in the sun. Dina remembers that ‘i panni lavati così erano tutta un’altra cosa’ (clothes washed in this way were really something else), and believes that the modern washing machine – la lavatrice – can’t wash clothes as well as the old method.

Detersivi (detergents) and ammorbidenti (fabric softeners) didn’t exist in those days, so people made their own soap using left over olio di oliva (olive oil), or grasso di maiale (pig fat) boiled in water with caustic soda, left to cool, and cut into small blocks. This soap was also used for personal hygiene.

Before washing la biancheria (the linen) with soap however,  it was first bleached and disinfected in the following way:

A large terracotta container, called la  conca, was filled with la biancheria. This was covered with un telo (a cloth) called il cenerone, on which was placed la cenere (ash) from the wood stove. Boiling water was poured over la cenere and allowed to filter through the linen inside la conca, exiting into a container from a spout at the base. This water was reheated and the process repeated until the the water that came out of the conca was the same temperature as that poured in. This indicated that all the linen had been properly soaked (see photo below).

La biancheria was then ready to be taken to the river or il lavatoio (the laundry). Il lavatoio in our village consisted of two large vasche (water troughs) under a stone arch, which were fed by una sorgente (a spring). This old lavatoio, where all the women once gathered to lavare i panni (wash the clothes), and exchange pettegolezzi (gossip), is now part of our property, and we mainly use it to store our supply of wood for the winter.

Above: Dina leads a cow down the street past the arch of the old lavatoio

Dina doesn’t, however, romanticize about the past in the way that many disillusioned city dwellers do. ‘Le cose sono molto meglio adesso poiché nel passato la vita era molto dura’ (things are much better now because in the past life was really hard), says Dina. In fact spending hours bent over the lavatoio washing clothes in the chilly spring water was just one of the hard physical tasks that women had to perform in the so called bei tempi andati (good old days).