Making soap

Ingredients:

3 litres/2.64 pints of water.

3 litres/2.64 pints of oil or kilos of fat.

1/2 kilo of lye.

Bluing, resin or salt.

A large tub.

A stick to stir.

Step 1

Stir the lye and the water together in the tub and let it stand the whole night.

Step 2

On the next day, add the oil or the fat gently, stirring always clockwise.

Step 3

Add the bluing, the resin or any other aromatic substance.

Step 4

Let it stand until hardening.

Step 5

Cut the soap into portions.

LAUNDRY AND ASHES

Nowadays, we have electrical appliances that help us to have our clothes clean and we can buy cleaning products and industrial bleach in any supermarket.

But formerly, until the first decades of the 20th century, laundry was a domestic event for all families. When household linens and bed sheets had been washed but were still wet, women put them in a large ceramic or zinc bucking-tub with a plughole at the bottom. The top was covered with an old sheet, then ashes were spread and hot water was poured over it. The water draining out of the tub was collected into a bucket underneath, and the process was repeated several times, until the whites were completely whitened and sanitized. Coloured clothes were washed in the water of the previous laundry. With the advent of the industrial bleach, this activity practically disappeared.