beautiful clothesline image

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Originally uploaded by StephaniaF

Clotheslines and Cardboard Boxes

As a child growing up in the 60’s there wasn’t the assortment of (unnecessary) toys that there are today. My fondest memories are clotheslines and cardboard boxes. Funny that those are still popular to this day. Put a child outside with a clothesline full of laundry and in minutes that child will realize the he or she really can “fly” through those clothes. With sheets as tents and shirt sleeves as boxing opponents the fun never ends   Add a large box to the mix and you’ll have trouble getting them to come back inside!

As a teen, since it would have looked pretty silly for me to be playing in a box and hitting the laundry I progressed to being the “hanger-outter” hanging laundry from inside the house.  Living in New Jersey at the time, all the houses were pretty much on top of each other so it was a great way for a nosey teenager to listen to all the gossip  I also experienced some kind of satisfaction that wouldn’t really make itself known until I got much older. 

Time went on and I got married. Our first house had a clothesline, 2 actually. I could have hung out of the window but there was a little roof that the laundry would have had to pass over and that didn’t make much sense so I had my first experience with actually getting my butt outside to hang the laundry. I liked it! It was a different feeling, being whole with nature instead of just peeking out at it. I could zone out for a moment and watch the birds flying by or the squirrels scurrying up a tree and for some reason that gave me incredible joy.

After a while we moved to Cape Cod and this is when I started really getting “clothesline crazy” . We rented our first place and my clothesline consisted of an umbrella style one sitting in the center of a cable spool. Not my favorite but we didn’t have kids yet so it was sufficient for the time. After a year we moved into our first house and hub BUILT me a clothesline. It was wood on both ends with 6 or 8 long clotheslines and it was cemented into the ground. Our first son was born during this time and it was his turn to ”fly” through the clothes.

When 2nd son came along space started getting alittle tight and we drove around town looking for neighborhoods that appealled to us. I remember vividly driving through a neighborhood and my husband saying “They don’t allow clotheslines there” GASP! Forget that neighborhood. Clotheslines are as much a part of my being as the air I breathe! We found a nice house, near the bay and I am back to hanging clothes from inside the house. Why? I’ll tell you …

I have almost completely lost my mind when it comes to hanging clothes. I have to admit that I use my dryer more than I want to but that is progressively getting better. I have 2 clotheslines coming from my bathroom/laundry room window out to the unused swingset. If the weather is favorable (I’m a huge fan of Weatherbug) I could be hanging clothes and spending time admiring the stars as late as 10 p.m. I can fit almost 3 loads of laundry on those 2 lines and I do! I have an umbrella style clothesline that I usually reserve for towels and I have 2 Mrs. Pegg’s Handy Lines in the house. One downstairs and one up for the kids stuff.

I have often heard people who garden say that it makes them feel closer to God. Personally having bugs crawl all over me would make me feel more like I’m visiting with the guy downstairs! But I get that feeling from hanging laundry. The energy savings and other benefits take a back seat to my relationship with God although they all compliment each other. I see it as God showing me that he cares  – “You wash, I’ll dry” – and it’s a good feeling. While I’m looking out the window I still see lots of birds and squirrels but I have the benefit of being above the ground too so I am often “visited” by chipmunks and bunnies. It’s when I thank God and talk to Him and I always feel better after I have my time with Him. It saddens me that some people who feel the same way are being told that they can’t connect with God in their own way because someone else doesn’t want to look at clothing off of a body. 

My hope is that, someday, everyone gets to experience the peace that comes along with hanging laundry and the joy of playing in clotheslines and cardboard boxes.

NP

 

And Dryers have Problems too!

Apart from wasting energy and causing fires, dryers don’t always work very well.  This problem became a major inconvenience last week.

With all the guests, kids and visitors returning to their rightful homes, I really needed to wash all the bedlinen.  We had so many visitors that it was sometimes a trick to remember who was sleeping behind which door.

So the great washday arrived – like the several before it, the weather was dull, cloudy, damp, cold, and not a breath of a breeze. In other words it was going to be a dryer day.  It has been several months since I had to use the dryer for sheets, so I had forgotten what a pain it was.

Putting large bed sheets, and holiday table linens, into the overcapacity dryer causes them to tumble into a corkscrew of knots, frequently curling themselves around pillow cases and other smaller items. The net effect is that the sensor in the dryer pings to say everything is dry – when the bulky mass inside the corkscrew is still wet.  The time it takes to unravel this mess, shake it out and then push back into the dryer, several times, is wasteful, not to mention frustrating.

All the sheets would have been dry in one day if they had been on the line, and they would have needed very little intervention from me.  As it was it took all day and several loads/reloads before each lot was dry. 

Today – a good drying day for winter.  So all the sweaters and jeans were washed and hung out- all but a few heavy sweaters dried by late afternoon. 

Water and Energy

Georgia is in a stage 4 drought which translates to major problems for northeast Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta in particular.  Each resident and business has been asked to reduce water usage by 10% over that used last winter.

The first month’s county figures are in.  The majority of places had reduces some consumption and alot had reached their target 10%.  That could not be said for the power companies that had actually used more water.  Water is consumed in the power plants, and yet the connection between reducing energy usage to save water has never been approached in the media. 

Bottom line is: save water on a domestic level by recycling water for use on plants etc, and reduce energy usage to reduce water used in the production of the power -ie  use a laundry line not the dryer whenever possible.

Dangerous Laundry lines???

This little nugget came across the email from the Laundrylist people.  Covenant advocates apparently think that a laundryline is a hazard.  After I had picked myself off the floor from laughing at the idea, I got to wondering what in the world this guy was thinking.

1) He maybe thinks that people can be decapitated by running headlong into a line.  I challenge everyone to find one such instance!  Most lines are strung at 6 feet height or slightly more.  Lower than that they droop when wet laundry is on them and you get towels dragging in mud. So to have any sort of accident close to the neck area or head, you would have to be quite a bit above average height and running full tilt and upright.

2) Most of my lines are not taut enough to be a hazard – at best you would boomerang back from it if you were careless enough to collide.

3)  Most laundry lines that are in smaller lot size properties are rotary not linear.  These are slightly shorter but still not taut enough to cause harm.  I suppose if you were really unlucky and caught the metal edge between the arms you could hurt your eye, but that is about as much damage as I can imagine.

3) Rotary lines, and many other lines that are attached to a post, are collapsed at night. In this state they are no more of a hazard, and probably less, than a baseball hoop which freely litters front driveways. Lets not forget as well that many people do have hazards in the back gardens that are not objected too – rusty gym sets, swings, young trees, support wires/rope for trees etc. etc.

So in finishing – if someone was trespassing and using my property for a public footpath, then they would still have to work really hard to sustain injury from my little line - although a good thwack from a damp sheet might make them think twice about using that route again!

If they are going to argue this on fantasy then cold hard facts should prevail.

How Green is Your Subdivison?

If there is one thing that has kept me out of subdivisions, it is the covenants. From weed vs. native plant and height of grass and their landscaping ideas, the whole business gives me problems.  So it is perhaps as well that I proudly hang my laundry outside, and my realtors spend their hours finding places that are outside the community setting. 

Other things in subdivisions bug me too.  The obsession with lawns that look like golf greens.  Now green is a restful color to look at, and lawns can be pleasant to walk on, but most people view their landscape from the back door, or the deck and rarely go out into the garden anyway.  Curb appeal is much enhanced by planting shrubs that give year round color and cutting back on grass is a wonderful start to a more environmentally friendly garden.

Winter Drying

Being in the south, winter is mild and has above freezing temps for much of the time, even at night.  The power of the sun though is much less and I have noticed that things take much longer to dry.  If the clothes are not out by 9 in the morning, then they will not be dry by 4 when I get them back in.

I have also noticed that the ‘fresh dried’ smell of shirts and sheets etc is much stronger in the winter than when they are baked dry in 2 hours on a mid summer day.  Sweaters have to go onto a rack on the porch after the line, so that they can be thoroughly aired before putting into the closet.

It is still a blessing though to be able to put laundry out in December.  We spent many years in the north when this was absolutely impossible.

Being Organized

One of the biggest excuses that I have heard over the years about hanging laundry is the time factor. They loved the smell, but just didn’t have time. Now with kids I can understand that – sometimes there just isn’t time to put the washer on before 6pm let alone hang the laundry. For those who work there is the added time factor of finding time in the morning to put the laundry out early enough that it will dry.

I don’t think I truly appreciated the time factor until this summer when I took two part time jobs. They required some organization on the domestic front that had not been needed for many years, and I am not reknown for being organized at the best of times.

The only way to do laundry was to wash at night after the kids had showered and find time at dawn to hang it out. This did work fine while the kids were on holiday, but was in danger of falling apart when they started back to school. I now have the timing down to a fine art: laundry into washer in late afternoon (when I get back), plonk into basket at 6 next morning, and hang between school runs at 8 each morning. If I am really lucky I can have an extra load into the washer by 6 in the morning and can hang it out at 8 as well.

This is the only way to do the laundry when you have a busy schedule. Think about your daily schedule and see when you need to put the laundry on the line, then work backwards to when it needs to be washed,

A little bit or organization can help.
Kate

The First Dryer

It is very likely that most people who are reading these blogs, have grown up with dryers. In England though, where I grew up they made a rather late entrance. In our family, which was middle class, the dryer made itself known to us when my sister and I were teenagers. I think the English weather might have had something to do with this decision. English summers, and winters, can be a depressing tally of damp days with no relief. So my father bought a dryer. Really what option did he have? His two teenage daughters were on the cusp of a real social life, albeit that the village offered very little life of any description let alone social life for teens – the towns had just appeared on our radar!

At first we all thought the dryer a novelty, and it really did improve the flow of laundry in the house. Slowly though the convenience of this thing became apparent. Friday and Saturday were the big nights. Big nights required the right outfit. Sometimes the right thing was in the closet, other times – well what we wanted was not there, and on inspection needed washing and drying within the hour! Things can be swilled through quickly, but drying them was always a problem until the dryer came along – whow, we could decide on the correct wardrobe at 5 pm and have both rinsed and dryed all by 7pm! Well you can imaging how great this was. That is until the electricity bill arrived!

I remember conversations about minimum numbers of items that could be dried; getting our act together as far as what we needed for the weekend; and I think we were offically banned from using it for a few weeks until the message got through to us.

Great inventions in the laundry world are indeed a bonus to life, but as we found out, they can be obused. There is a price to pay for the convenience, and yes, we did finally learn that dryers were useful but we also found out that they are a disaster for a ‘need it dried now’ sweater!

The Problem with a Line

Over the years I have wrestled with the idea of a linear washing line. I have a capable rotary one, but that is not great when it comes to sheets and lots of towels.  So a line is a practical thing. 

However, where I am right now, I am surrounded by trees in the back garden (which is good), but I cannot for the life of me find two trees that are the right distance apart and have limbs placed where I can reach for a line. 

I don’t want to puncture the trees with hooks, but neither do I want to dig into the root zone to secure a post.  The old kiddy gym set is the right height but not stable enough, the rustic swinging loveseat has the same problem.  Then of course, even if I overcome these pesky little problems, I will need to find a prop to keep everything up in the air.  Over the years in the USA I have improvized this part, so no doubt I can do so again. 

Tomorrow is forecast to be decent weather so I guess I will do the sheets and ponder positioning the line while I peg them onto the rotary line. Pegging things onto a line, whatever the design,  is an ideal time to ponder all sorts of things in this life.