I saw these in the laundry room of my building, what are these? I never saw them in my country

20 comments
  1. Mankeli. It’s for straightening/ironing out bedclothes or curtains. Can get the nice and flat for storage too

  2. It is a “mankeli”. Used for pressing bed sheets. An alternative for ironing. Don’t know how to operate one, don’t care about smooth sheets enough. 🙂 It’s quite old thing, that is rarely used anymore. (Atleast I do not know anyone my age who does it)

  3. Its for pressing bed sheets and such. I bet you’d struggle to find anyone younger than say early 50’s to show you how to operate them. I have never in my life met anyone who a. has used these or b. Knows how they operate.
    That is including my parents. Grandparents used to have hand cranked version of this machine some 20 years ago. Never saw them use it but I suppose they must have at some point of time.

  4. This, as well as ironing, presses the fibres of the sheets so that they gather less dust. It’s not only a vanity thing, it can be really important for someone who has allergies or sinus issues and need an environment with as little extra particles to breath in as possible.

  5. Mangles are fairly ubiquitous around the world. You probably just haven’t seen one as they are more from a bygone age.

  6. It’s a mangler.It is used for mangling bed linens.

    * Fold the linens along the short edge. Pillowcases in two, duvet covers in three and sheets in four. With the sheets, turn the “top” leaf to the back so you get a “Σ” sort of fold.
    * There may be a weird hinged thing attached to a wall where you can pinch one end of the linen and then pull to get the worst of the sideways creases out.
    * Open the finger guard, pull the fabric out and feed one end of the sheet in.
    * Close the finger guard. The mangler should start pulling the sheet and the fabric in.
    * Let it spin for a while. I usually fold the next item while this is happening.
    * Open the finger guard and pull a now nicely smoothed bed linen out of the machine.

  7. Wringer/mangle “originally used to wring water from wet laundry, today mangles are used to press or flatten sheets, tablecloths, kitchen towels, or clothing and other laundry”

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