When I was growing up in Chicago, one of my earliest memories was watching the menfolk miraculously hang a laundry cord on a reel between two apartment buildings. It was a feat of Cirque de Soleil status, as the younger men dangled perilously off the back porches of our four-story walk-ups as they maneuvered and hooked the cords into place.As I grew older, I shunned the "poor" way of drying clothes for a fancy dryer. What a mistake! When I finally moved to my homestead in north Texas, one of the first things I did was ask Greg to put up a couple of clotheslines between trees. (Thank goodness it wasn't another four-story walk-up.)
My clothes smell better and they dry fast. Sometimes the jeans get a little stiff, but I just stick them in the dryer for less than five minutes and they come out soft and pliable.If you have the room, I highly recommend a clothesline. Dryers are huge energy hogs. Sunshine is free. And it only takes me a few minutes to hang clothes.
All you need is a sturdy rope and two trees or posts. For smaller yards, they even have carousel lines or portable lines and posts that can be strung and moved anywhere. Try it for a few weeks and you'll never be so dependent on your machine dryer again. 
8 comments:
Angelina Rain said...
When I was a kid in Lithuania we used to line dry in our balcony all the time. We had dryers in our apartment building's basement, but drying it outside was easier and made everything smell nicer.
Maria Zannini said...
Angelina: I didn't know you grew up in Lithuania. Cool.
When I visited Italy, I noticed a lot of clothes lines on balconies.
LD Masterson said...
We always hung the clothes outside when I was growing up. I tried it when we moved into our first home in LA but the air polution was so bad, the clothes were dirty again before they were dry. I bet it would work here in Ohio. Except... can you really have birdfeeders and clothes lines in the same back yard?
Maria Zannini said...
Linda: I cannot believe the air pollution was so bad that it would ruin the laundry. How do people breathe in that place? Terrible.
I have a bird feeder just a few feet from my clothelines. Sometimes the birds use it as a staging area, but never when clothes are on the line. --so far.
Angela Brown said...
Growing up, no one in my immediate neighborhood had a dryer. Hanging the clothes out to dry was a must.
I hang my head shamefully admitting I am in lust with my dryer. It makes things hot and tingly when I put a piece on straight from the dryer.
Okay, walking away now :-)
Maria Zannini said...
I will cut you some slack in the winter cuz I like getting my jammies out of a nice warm dryer too, but in the summer--fuggedaboutit.
I spent years a slave to my dryer. Now I hang my undies outside. Gives the squirrels and robins something to talk about.
Jackie Burris said...
Up till marrying an allergic asthmatic never knew what a clothes dryer was Maria. The first 2 years of our marriage we used Laundromats to wash and dry our clothing, what memories that brings back!
My Mom loves to hang clothes out to dry, we need to put up a clothesline for her to use but have not done so yet at the home we live in now. When we lived at our previous home the clothesline was the first thing I fixed, it had vinyl covered wire that was mildewed so replaced with regular silver wire and used it for my clothes and Mom's until the house burned last September. Nothing like sunshine dried clothes, like you the birds stayed off the line when clothes were hung.
Maria Zannini said...
Jackie: You can't beat the Mother Nature smell. Much better than perfumes.
Storms coming. Look like tornado clouds. Shutting down for a while.