I believe you won’t be able to guess what this is. However, I hope you can prove me mistaken.
Hand washing clothes involves soaking, pounding, scrubbing, and rinsing dirty fabrics. Before indoor plumbing, people had to fetch all the water required for laundry washing, boiling, and rinsing from a pump, well, or spring.
The laundry water was carried manually, heated over a fire to make washing easier, and then poured into a tub.
Only a limited quantity of warm, soapy water could be utilized. It would be employed to cleanse increasingly soiled laundry once the least soiled garments were washed.
Washing clothes by hand involved soaking, beating, scrubbing, and rinsing dirty fabrics. Before indoor plumbing, all the water for laundry had to be fetched from a pump, well, or spring. Carrying water, heating it over a fire, and pouring it into a tub was how laundry was done. This limited the amount of warm, soapy water available, which was used to wash dirtier clothes after the cleaner ones.
After the clothes were washed, there was an additional step to remove the soap and water. Initially, clean water would be used to rinse away the soap. Then, the wet clothes would be rolled up and twisted by hand to eliminate the water. When drying and ironing were included, this whole process often lasted an entire workday.