Doing laundry was a craft

Doing laundry was a pretty well-paid job. It enabled women to afford a house and education for their children. Being a washerwoman was quite the entrepreneurial undertaking. A washerwoman would receive orders and divide them among her circle. The washerwomen were specialized, so trousers would go to the trousers lady, shirts to the shirts lady, sheets to the sheets lady, and so on. Infamous were the boats with dirty laundry from Europe (!): when those arrived in Trinidad, people on the waterside had to pinch their noses. Imagine how that must have smelled after being on sea for months.

Throughout time, washerwomen have had to be inventive to keep their customers satisfied. It was especially a challenge to get the clothes dried, starched and ironed on time during the rainy season. Head scarfs, for example, were dried in the oven, with the oven door slightly opened, or in front of the metal rack on the back of a refrigerator, where the fan blows out its heat. The traditional koto was the hardest, not only because it was worn in a complicated way, but also because it contained a lot of cloth. Many ironers have nagged on their clients for being covered in huge patches of cloth. The result however, was beautiful. The washboard and the laundry tub: they form a humble duo only at first sight, for they could not be missed in their time.