A new day A new experience

Laundry Bluing

Back when I was a kid Mrs. Stewart's bluing was a staple in our house. It had a place on the shelf where other laundry supplies were kept. My Mother always used it to make our white things look whiter. It was a blue liquid that was put in the last tub of water that the clothes were rinsed in. It tended to make things look a lot whiter.

Mrs. Stewart's bluing was born in the early 1880s. From the article I read it is still being used for a lot of things not associated with laundry: for rinsing gray hair to make it look whiter, for swimming pools to make the water a prettier blue, to soothe wasp and bee stings and other uses such as medical dyes and to trace leaks in automotive cooling systems.

I have never used bluing at all during my lifetime but I do remember it well because my Mother used it regularly. I can still remember the familiar bottle it came in.

So, while it is obsolete as a laundry product it is still useful in many other ways.

I wonder if Mrs. Stewart could be Martha Stewart's grandmother?

posted by kyra lafain @ 9/22/2008 12:30:00 PM