Hanging out...

(not the best picture ever, but you get the idea!)

...the clothes that is! Do you remember last fall when I was experimenting with all kinds of ideas on how to save money?? Well one of the things that I have been wanting to try is a clothesline. The "experts" say that the clothes dryer is the third largest consumer of energy in the typical household. So, I've been wanting to give the clothesline a try. The weather finally cooperated last week. It was beautiful and sunny and especially windy which makes for nice laundry weather.

Anyway, I spent hours researching the best kind of line and the best kind of peg and the proper way to hang your clothes. You wouldn't think it, but there is a LOT of information out there about laundry! I decided to go with a temporary line at first. We just bought a six dollar piece of 100 ft clothesline and strung it from the fence to the back porch post and back to the fence. I wasn't sure if I would really like hanging the laundry and I didn't want to invest a lot of time or money up front. Six dollars?? OK, I can handle that. If you know me, you know that laundry is my arch nemesis. I hate it. I don't mind the washing and sorting. It's the folding. It tends to pile up around here. So, why would I want to take a job that I hate and make it more labor intensive??? I don't have any rational explanation, except that I just wanted to give it a try.

You will never guess what I found out. I love hanging clothes on the line! It's really quite fun. Lucie LOVES being outside while I do it. She likes to run through the lines so the clothes just touch the top of her head. And she likes handing me the clothes out of the basket. Although this is not always prudent. Sometimes they get drug through the grass before they make it to the line. But we are getting better. There is definitely a learning curve involved here. The first time I did it, I had no idea what I was doing and I was slow. I'm sure the neighbors were giggling as they watched me through their windows. But the more I do it the better it gets. And I haven't had a single load of laundry piled on my bed since. The clothes get washed, hung, immediately folded and put away. It's genius. I think that laundry was just too mindless and mundane and slow before. It would take all day and I would get distracted with other things. It wasn't a challenge. Weird, I know.

So here is what I have learned:

*our climate is ideal for line drying. With the wind we had last week, the load would be dry in about thirty minutes.
*towels aren't stiff if you put them in the dryer for about five minutes before you hang them on the line.
*I love line dried blue jeans!!
*big items like sheets and tablecloths come out so pristeen! Not a wrinkle on them--I love it!
*shirts are a little tricky. The first time I did it, I clipped them upside down and we ended up with little "peaks" on the side seams. Next I tried putting them on a hanger and clipping the hanger to the line. That worked out better, but sometimes you end up with "shoulder bumps". It just takes practice to know which shirts should be clipped which way.
**warning--on really windy days shirts on hangers make great kites! Be careful!
*the smell of line dried clothes is divine!
*I still prefer to dry socks and underwear in the dryer.

When the weather cooperates, I can line dry about 4 out of every five loads. Not too bad. I'm anxious to see how much I save on my power bill. I guess you could say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the whole process. I will probably even go to a more permanent set-up soon. Give it a try and let me know what you think!