Tag #133405 - Interview #101072 (Zsuzsa Diamantstein)

My mother took care of the household, because we had only one kitchen. So we moved in there. We had a housemaid, my grandparents had another one, and then – because the apartment was big, and we were many there – both maids remained to help out mom. One of them used to do the work in the kitchen, while the other one used to clean up the place. It wasn't like today, when they only come once a week, they brushed the parquet daily and there was a serious cleaning. Not to mention that washday was a big deal then. The washwoman came, and they rubbed [the clothes] in two rounds, they boiled, starched and blued them. At that time there was no colorful table-linen, no colorful bed-linen, so the bed-linen and the table-linen was white. To make them white as snow, they put a liquid in the last wash water, it was called starch blue, which didn't stain the clothes, but gave them a nice, white color. The water became blue, and thereby the white clothes became china white.