Laundry Room Vintage Patent Prints

Our FREE printable Vintage Patent Prints will bring style and beauty to your laundry room and make those piles of clothing a little less intimidating!

Washing clothes, drying clothes, ironing clothes, folding clothes. As far as chores go, these are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Together they unite and form the terrible beast we call “Laundry.”

Laundry has plagued mankind for thousands of years, and if you think you have it bad in 2018 – Sister, you should have seen how it was done when papyrus was considered high tech!

Oh, and before you berate me for saying “mankind” instead of “womankind” when it comes to the odious task of laundry, I’ll point out that in many countries, men have shared (and continue to share) equally in the misery. Here is a picture of a makwagi – an Egyptian ironing man. Yes, he’s ironing with his feet. Does your husband do that for you?

Let’s move on to the printables. Today we’re going to celebrate both the history of Laundry and those who do battle with it by offering you a wonderful selection of laundry room vintage patent prints. So the next time you’re stuffing bushels of smelly socks and chocolate-stained T-shirts into your electric washing machine, you can look up at your wall and say, “Hey this isn’t so bad! I have it pretty good!”

This warm and fuzzy feeling will last exactly 3 seconds, and then you will go back to cursing your children and husband for the untidy slobs they are.

Let’s start with the laundry basket, because you can’t do laundry without first transporting your load of crusty duds to the laundry room. It’s hard to believe that something as simple as a laundry basket could receive a patent. I’m thinking the handles were avant garde at the time and really helped to push laundry basket technology into the 20th century.

Now, you may be thinking, “Laundry basket technology? There’s no technology in a basket!”

To which I would counter: Madam, I have seen my son stow a full month of dirty clothing in one laundry basket. If that isn’t high technology, then it is surely some sort of teenage devilry. It’s like a room that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It warps the brain.

Our next inventor is part of an elite group of men who sought to ease the back-breaking labor of washing dirty clothing. Though Alva J Fisher is generally credited with inventing the modern electric washing machine, scores before him had devised various mechanical methods for cleaning clothes. One of them was a man named Pickel, and our next laundry room vintage patent print pays homage to his beautiful creation.

Say it with me, now: “Thank you, Mr. Pickel!”

Okay, so your load of laundry is done. Time to toss it in the dryer, right?

Not so fast, Missy! If you were just a little older, you might remember the days when there was a step between washing and drying.

It was called “wringing,” and it had nothing to do with what most wives wanted to do to their husbands’ necks on laundry day.

Faced with a laundry basket full of wrung-out dungarees and unmentionables, our wash jockies had a couple of choices. The old standby was the clothesline. Simple and efficient, it had been the fashionable way to dry clothes for centuries. In fact, it still is for many people. All you need is a rope and one of these little inventions:

Oh, but I forgot! You’re avant garde! The old ways won’t do for you, Madam! You want the very latest in clothes-drying technology! Very well, then you may hang your hosiery on one of these:

And now your clothes are dry. Huzzah! It’s time to break out the bathtub gin, right?

Not so fast, Launderella! Those unsightly wrinkles won’t do! What will they think of you and your family if they see you strolling through the town green in rumpled clothing?

Tongues will wag, Madam. Tongues will wag and cluck.

To keep your high stature in society, you’ll need to press those wrinkles out, and what better way than with a sad iron.

They called it a sad iron because of how it made you feel when you used it.

Sad.

Lonely.

Frustrated.

Angry.

Why the hell am I doing this?

I never get any help around here!

Bring me my wringer! I know of a few necks that’ll be needing it!

Nah, I’m kidding. It was called a “solid iron,” but the pronunciation was shortened over time to “sad.”

Still, I can’t imagine many other emotions winning out when faced with a mountain of rumpled rompers and a scalding-hot sad iron.

Okay, that’s it for our free laundry room vintage patent prints. We hope you like them!

Stay tuned, because next we’ll be giving you some awesome (and free!) Ballard-Designs-inspired laundry room wall art which will knock you out of your knickers!

So ladies, on a parting note, the next time your sofa sprout groans when you ask for a little well-deserved help in the laundry room, just whisper “makwagi” in his ear and drop a hot sad iron in his lap. He’ll get up in a flash – I promise.

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As usual some generic information on today’s printables: Handan designed these 6 free printable laundry room patent art in two sizes and three colors, so there are 36 total printables. All will fit into a 16×20 inch frame or a 24×36 poster frame, though you may scale them up or down as necessary. 24×36 inch scales down easily to 20×30 / 16×24 / 12×18 / 8×12 / 4×6 inches, and 16×20 inch scales down to 12×15 / 8×10 / 4×5 inches with no problems. If you need help with scaling down these printables so you can print them using your home printer, then make sure you check out Handan’s “How To Easily Resize Pictures” post.

Now it’s time to click on the button below to download today’s free laundry room vintage patent prints – they are all in the Patent Art section of The VIP Patch.

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