Very OT: Question for the Brits amoungst us

Thank you for the good advice! I have sent this to my email to save and see what we might be able to manage to try ourselves. :o)

I had heard about the fabric softener sheets (your other message) before... I think it may have either been mentioned here on rcty or I saw it online somewhere else. I didn't know that before, mind you. The main time we ever use those is when drying towels to keep them soft. Most of the rest of our laundry is hung out on the clothesline to dry in the fresh air... even in the winter where they freeze and you have to bend them to fit them in the dryer later, or just hang them up on the clothes rack over a furnace vent to thaw and dry. ;o)

Actually, if I ever won the lottery I have a lot more important things to do with the money before I even think about a washer and dryer for myself.

Thank you Cher! I have sent your message to myself for future reference too.

I miss you girl... haven't heard from you in ages! Do take care.

My grandmother had a shallow stone sink and an enamel bowl for when she was using hot water - which was heated on the fire. Her only tap water was cold.

My mother had a ceramic (Belfast) sink which was very deep and would have used a lot of water to fill, she also only had a cold tap. She used an enamel bowl until plastic bowls were invented.

We have a large stainless steel sink which would take a lot of water to fill - I use it for washing large items but for washing things which don't go into the dishwasher I use a plastic bowl. It's more friendly to glassware than stone, porcelain or metal and saves water. Hot water isn't a problem because ours is heated by the sun but we don't want to waste water, it's a precious commodity.

Many modern sinks are made from a type of plastic but they're fat too small for some items. I wouldn't have one.

As for salmonella from plastic bowls - where on Earth did that come from? I've never heard of it, very few people contact salmonella and it's not from plastic bowls.

If it comes to it, the modern plastic sinks could be just as guilty of harbouring bacteria as a bowl. Or even a metal, ceramic or stone sink, it's almost impossible to sterilize any item. I don't put my hands in an autoclave and eat a lot of food using my fingers :-)

Mary

Brushes aren't metal, they're carbon.

Mary

I've never heard of or seen a cast iron sink - are you sure about that? If so I'd be interested in a reference.

Mary

I've never heard of that, people have had mixer taps for decades - my uncle had one when I was a child.

We don't have a mixer tap for various reasons but we have two swan necked laboratory taps at the kitchen sink which will swing and yet still have enough room underneath to fill a deep vessel - such as a watering can. Not that I do that any more but it can still be useful.

My kitchen sink is a vital tool and must work for me, do everything demanded of it.

Mary

That's exactly like the set-up in my Grandma's house except that it was a cellar kitchen with one room above - nothing as romantic as a cottage :-)

Yes, they were good and bad in different ways from today but things aren't perfect even now.

Mary

They'd better not in this house!

Mary

We still do that when camping. It's not really a terribly inconvenient process :-)

Mary

And you don't want to (under normal circumstances). But marketing companies are doing fabulous jobs at scarying everyone into buying anti-bacterial cleaners.

VP

Vintage Purls wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@m37g2000prh.googlegroups.com:

vinegar is mildly antibacterial. 10% bleach solution is antibacterial... the 10% bleach is what we used for cleaning the meat cutting lab in college & it was also standard for cleaning milking equipment. that's good enough to convince me. lee

"Mary Fisher" wrote in news:4684e4bf$0$758$ snipped-for-privacy@master.news.zetnet.net:

enameled cast iron was pretty common in the US for both sinks & bath tubs during the 1800s. lee

Enameled cast iron was standard until the cheap, somewhat flexible enameled steel sinks and tubs began to be made (during the 1940s?).

But my greatgrandmother's sink was soapstone.

=Tamar

Quite sure, I have seen one. My aunt lived in an old farm house, (the newest portion completed right after the US Civil War-1800s) there was a cast iron sink in her kitchen. It was shaped very much like this one

In message , Mary Fisher writes

It were not romantic Mary. They were a row of 4 tiny cottages which had been converted from farm stables. The front was built from stone and the back from brick. Just two rooms up and two down in which 6 of us lived me being the youngest. The lavatory was a tuppenny bus ride away at the top of the garden. The copper for washing was out on the back yard alongside the coal house. They were called Spray's Cottages. Shirley

snipped-for-privacy@radix.net (Richard Eney) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

i remodeled my bath a couple years ago. we had to sledgehammer the cast iron tub to get it out.

i'd love a soapstone sink! we had one in the laundry room when i was little. lee

Do you have a reference?

Mary

Soapstone is pretty soft and damages easily (we use it for other things because it carves easily), I don't think I'd want a sink from it.

Mary