[Vella Gonzaga]

Soap saver​

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Credits: Facebook/Australia Remember When

Do you remember washing your hair in cement laundry tubs or an enamel dish with a soap saver? Mums used this handy gadget back when soap was more expensive, swirling it in the water to use every last bit of the soap. Do you have any memories of those simpler times? Tell us in the comments below.

 

[Benny's Light]

My grandmother always had one of these in the kitchen and laundry (in the concrete tubs) with the sunlight soap. She said it was the "magic cleaner".

 

[janj]

I even used one years ago

 

[Robyn D Graham]

I can remember Mum getting the fresh milk after dad had milked the cows ( by hand I might add) and pouring it into the separator to get off the cream.I would be allowed to turn the handle sometimes. After that she would make the butter and I was always fascinated by the way the butter paddles made a groovy pattern on the block of butter.

 

[Useless]

Sunlight soap was the bees knees of soap during tha war years.it did everything from washing hair and clothes to floors etc and its back in use again today.

 

[Gsr]

From the age of 4 to 12 the house we lived in out in the sticks had no bathroom. The only rooms with a ceiling were the two bedrooms in the middle of the house. The kitchen, fridge room, so called because our kerosene fridge was in there, it was a long storage room near the kitchen, probably the lounge room if we had a lounge room, and the two rooms on the ends of the front verandah all had no ceilings, just the tin roof on the rafters. All wooden floors with no floor coverings, no fly screens anywhere. One verandah room never even had a door, the older boys slept in there. The fridge room never even had a window, just a wooden door that opened covered the space where the window should have been. One end of the kitchen was all tin to house the wood stove and big open fire. We had an outside wash house with twin cement tubs, this is where we bathed, either in the tub or in a large metal dish we only fitted in til we were about 5, after that we stood in it and splish splashed the water over us. We washed our hair in a metal dish and had soap holders as pictured to swish around and make suds. We used sunlight soap for everything. I still use it today. We had boards for our paths outside the laundry. A big board nailed to the side of the kitchen to hold a dish, soap, towel for hand washing. Everyone used the same dish for cleaning our teeth. Outside dunny down the back of the house, very scary if we had to go after dark, only a lantern for light. No electricity, no fans, heat from open fire in winter was our only heating. One tank outside and a well across the paddock for water. I have so many happy memories of living in that house.

 

[Useless]

I agree withgsr it was like that for all of us with the memories you have touched on,with water being re used at bath time in tin tub and outside funny which you ran too in the winter and remember the copper where all clothes were rubbed down with sunlight soap,oh the memories we have.

 

[Penny4]

You can still buy those stainless steel soap savers. Zero waste stores sell them. I have a store near me. They do sell blocks of soap bars, except they don't contain palm oil like Sunlight. They told me this because they are saving the Orangutans.