My Clothesline

     I love my clothesline. I am so happy to live in a climate that makes using a clothesline very practical and do-able. With six people in our family we generate a lot of laundry. Actually, I should say with five people and a Rebekah we generate a lot of laundry. (Rebekah will try an outfit on, take it off, leave it on the floor and then put it in the dirty clothes. She uses twice the clothes of everybody else.)

     I love that I can put a load of clothes in, and then hang them up to dry outside and they can be dry within an hour. During the summer, when temperatures reach over 100 degrees, the clothes can dry within 35-45 minutes.  Now that it has cooled off down into the 80’s it is taking a little longer, but not much. Because there is no dew at night, we also can leave the clothes on the line overnight. But as Sarah and Ben found out, when you bring them inside the next morning, you may find a moth or two sleeping in your shirts.

     I also love the way clothes and linens smell when they are dried outside. It is a very fresh, sweet scent to me that no dryer sheet can match. Towels dried outside are very stiff, but they soak up a lot of water when used. I don’t mind the rough towels, probably because I grew up with line-dried towels. And I know, the burning question is: “Do you hang everything on the line?” The answer is “yes, I do.” I have a system where I will hang pants and shirts on the first outside line, then I will hang the “unmentionables” on the second line, then finish up with more shirts and pants. This way the stuff that could be embarrassing is hidden in the middle.

     Saving on my electricity bill is a big plus for using the clothesline. I like using the free solar power to do a needed job. Since the kids do their own laundry, I will usually help when they hang their clothes out. I like the time where no other distractions are around to talk to whoever is helping me.  The final reason that I love using my clothesline is it gets me outside during the day and I get a little bit more exercise. I have to carry the basket out, bend and stretch picking up the clothes and pinning them to the line,  and then reverse the process to take them off the line. Not too much exercise, I know, but every little bit helps.