I still remember the day we got our first electric washing machine. My mother took the old hand-crank washer out and bashed it into pieces so that a) Dad couldn’t whine about her being “lazy” for using an electric washer (even though she worked at two jobs to buy the new washer herself), and b) nobody else could ever go through what she called the “torture” of using the old washer.

Then again, in the old days people had a lot fewer clothes than they do now. I don’t think I could get my week’s laundry done in one week with a wringer washer, even working at it full-time.