Laundry day in the Garden of Eden was, Eve, ever the ecologist, not wanting to defoliate the trees, washing her fig leaf down by the stream. Adam walked by and tossed his at her. “Here, as long as you’re washing yours, do mine too.” And that is how it all started.
    In America, many people have washing machines in their homes while others use the local laundry mat. No one has to go to go down to the local stream or pond and wash their clothes by hand using hand made soap. In many countries there are still women that are doing that millennium’s old hated chore. Laundry day has left us a wealth of ephemera worldwide that is colorful, sometimes esthetically pleasing, and often a social documentary of the technology and social mores of the times. Often, the use of ethnic groups was used to shift the burden of the disliked task, portraying that they enjoyed the task. Ah, the double talk and myths that advertisers perpetuate -- and society believes.
     The plight of Chinese in this country was worse than that of any other ethnic group. They paid to come here, had absolutely no rights, and were bought and sold when they got here. A freed slave could own land or mine it, but the Chinese were not allowed to. Thousands of Chinese were chained in mines and died there working them. Bought and sold at auctions, they often died of starvation. This is an unconscionable story of which few are aware. Chinese immigrants went into the laundry business, as it was one of the few things they were allowed to do. Advertising from this period is a social documentary of how the Chinese were treated, or should I say mistreated.
     Posters, broadsides, trade cards, postcards, points of sale, display cabinets, and products are all avidly looked for by country store collectors. Washday may no longer encompass the “Blues” and be easier than what our mothers went through, but if our mothers and grandmothers had kept that packaging, what would some of it be worth today?
     The Sixties gave us television jingles, soap operas on radio as well as TV, and a wealth of NEW products. New means it was changed -- and soap powders, bluing, starches, bleaches, etc. were changed quite often, and were always being advertised as new. Soap operas were sponsored by "soaps" and thus have taken on the name of their original sponsors, even if soap products are no longer sponsoring them today.
     Let’s see how old you are. Do you remember on the radio “The Life of Helen Trent”? It was on every day around noon and it was about a woman, named of course, Helen Trent. “Is there life after 35?” was what they asked. So if a woman was 35, or worse, older, life was over, that is if she was single. Helen Trent was out to prove she had the grit to change all that. My mother used to listen to it, I remember, but I don’t remember if Helen Trent continued to get older, or remained 35 forever, or how it all ended, if it ever did. Helen Trent never, in all the years I remember listening to this show (only because it was on while I was having lunch) did Helen use the sponsor’s product and do her laundry.
     Radio programs began it all, daily addicting people to an ongoing story. Soaps sponsored many programs from the LUX Radio theater, where Starlets had conversations with the host about washing their delicate clothing in LUX to emulate the great Bette Davis or the beautiful Jean Harlow, to shows of some of the popular comics and personalities of the day. When “Soaps” got into TV they began changing their product wrappers even more rapidly and claiming all types of wonderful things about their products. Brand X made laundry day so much more exciting and easier. Can you imagine how boring a person must be to find laundry day exciting! With technology came change: using only one product for all your laundry needs and washing machines that considerably cut down the time involved. All of the soapboxes are ephemera. They were meant to be used, then tossed. The samples are especially prized by collectors, as are the ones with special offers or free items in, or on them. Most soap collectors collect internationally. Because trading has become a large part of their collecting, the price of shipping, especially internationally, has affected the prices.
    From well before 1900 to today, laundry soaps have come in bars, as flakes, as liquid, as powder, and often served for dishes as well. The wealth of items as well as the advertising about them is incredible and can be found at advertising shows, ephemera shows, country stores, and any place quality eclectic Americana is sold. You might even find some in your own home or your parents, just sitting there waiting for Helen Trent to use -- or you to collect.