For over 150 years, the rhythm of domestic life in Australia was defined by the weekly routine of household tasks. Monday — the first day after the Christian Sabbath, when the whole family was supposed to rest — was almost universally observed as washing day, and for women this was the most labour-intensive day of the week. In the mid-nineteenth century, the wash for a large family could occupy the washerwoman from early morning till well into the evening. The laundry for an average family could require, in washing, boiling and rinsing, as much as 50 gallons of water. Standard routines often involved the use of a copper and as many as three or four large tubs for washing, blueing and starching (Webber 1996: 151–2; Wicken: 177–87; Hackett 1916: 267–92). Working people were sometimes called ‘the great unwashed’, a title that, as the artisan Thomas Wright explained, signified that they had ‘black hands to earn white money’, presumably in contrast to the white-handed plutocrats whose money was not as clean (Wright 1868: viii). Their work clothes, soiled from their labours, often required thorough boiling, blueing, starching and rinsing to be made clean. Most people, however, owned many fewer changes of clothes than we do, and changed them less frequently. An expert on housewifery in the 1930s advised ‘at least a weekly change of underclothes’, a standard that most people would now consider low (Blackmore 1931: 8). Men wore business shirts several times, changing the detachable collars each day, before washing the shirt itself at the end of the week.

That this regime remained unchanged for so long was, in part, a measure of the low status that laundry, and those who performed it, enjoyed in Australian society (Webber 2000). At the end of the Second World War only 2 per cent of Melbourne households owned a washing machine and few people expected to do so (Webber 1996: 175). Then, quite suddenly, it all changed. By 1952, 28 per cent of Australian capital city households had acquired a washing machine, the most popular brand being the compact, inexpensive and freestanding Hoover (Opinion Research Centre 1952: 10, 12). By 1959 ownership had risen to 60 per cent; by 1963, 71 per cent; and by 1977, 91 per cent (McLeod 2007: 45). The standard washing machine then had at least twice the carrying capacity of the little Hoover and was almost completely automated. The advent of the washing machine also coincided with rapid changes in the mass production of clothing, especially the introduction of rayon, nylon and drip-dry or non-iron fabrics. Washing machine manufacturers now encouraged housewives to treat their washing machines as laundry baskets, throwing in clothes as soon as the wearers discarded them, and turning on the machine as soon, and as often, as they wished. In less than 20 years, the traditional Monday Washing Day had come to an end. The relative ease with which clothes could now be washed, dried and returned to the wardrobe removed a significant brake on the volume of clothes washed, and, in turn, on the amount of water consumed in the process. By the 1990s, the plunging price of mass-produced clothing, especially from China, and the gyrations of the adolescent fashion market further compounded the trend. Today, washing clothes accounts for approximately 15 per cent of domestic water consumption, a proportion that has hardly changed since 1900, even although the per-capita consumption of water has more than doubled (ABS 2004 in Troy and Randolph 2007; and compare Bruce and Kendall 1901: 55). The advent of the washing machine did not, of itself, greatly increase the amount of water used for washing clothes. Standard washing machine brands of the late 1950s used about 10 gallons of water for an 8lb wash, well under the 50 gallons used for the admittedly larger household of the 1850s (John McIlwraith Buying Guide 1959). The main effect of the arrival of the washing machine was not to wash the same clothes more efficiently, but to facilitate an increase in the size of people’s wardrobes to accommodate the rapid changes of attire characteristic of a fashion-driven, consumer society.