washday?

[Eway]

My dictionary simply says that a washday is "a day set aside for doing household laundry". But we don't have such a specific day in my culture / country, so I still can't grasp the idea.
I also searched by Google and found that traditionally a washday would be a Monday. I even found terms like "blue washday" and "every faithful washday slave". But... when / how / why was this tradition formed? Can anybody tell me more about this culture?

[Mister Micawber]

.
In the early days, we did not bathe or change our clothes often. One day a week sufficed to be set aside as the day to go down to the river and beat our homespun clothing against the rocks. Monday was a good day for this, because by Saturday night, our clothes were pretty smelly. (Sunday, of course, no work could be done-- that is the Lord's Day.)

Hope this helps.

[Ouisch]

Before the advent of the automatic washer and dryer, laundry was usually an all-day chore. After the clothes were washed, they had to be hung up to dry. Once they were dry, they had to be ironed.

[Eway]

Thanks a lot. I think I got the basic idea.