I love hanging my clean laundry on the line out back behind my house. I love the actual act of pulling the damp clothes out of the washer, lugging the clothes tub out into the yard and one by one, pinning the wet items to the line. It's one of the best chores I do. Hanging laundry ranks up there with soaking beans for supper and baking bread. Plus, it's a really easy way to save a few bucks. The breezes are free for the taking. I love the smell of the freshly dried clothes and I often bury my face in the cleanness of them. My kids like to do that, too. But I think the real reason I like to hang out my clean clothes to dry is that the actual act of drying can't be sped up. It's like cooking in the crock pot. Slow. In my really (sometimes impossibly) busy life, it's good to have some things that can't be rushed.
I have an "umbrella" style clothes line (weird that it's still called a "line" when it's really a circle. I guess I could say "I'm going out to hang the clothes on the circle".....but it doesn't have the same ring). My mom taught me how to hang laundry. She had a system where no action or clothes pin was wasted. She made it an art, though I didn't know it at the time.
My mom had a simple set of lines out back consisting of three strands of heavy gauge wire bolted and strung between a couple of big iron T-shaped posts. She would hang items in batches according to how she washed them and then how they went into the linen closets. When she washed sheets, she washed all of them at once, folded them damp into the basket from the washing machine then hung them on the line. She hung the sheets partially folded so they didn't take up too much room. Plus they were perfectly ready to fold back into the laundry basket when dry, shortening the time spent out in the yard on a toasty Texas afternoon. Where we lived in Texas, the breezes blew hot almost constantly in the summer months so there is not much worry about the clothes mildewing on the line. Plus, because it is so warm, the sheets dried in record time even though they were hung in layers. Here in Montana, the clothes dry but it takes a little longer due to the cooler climate. But I don't mind. The mountain air imparts a great smell to the clean, line dried clothes. They seem to take on the smell of the warm, grassy fields.
The outcome is a bunch of tubs filled with clean clothes ready for our drawers.
Unfortunately, there's also this:
a basket of single, orphaned socks.
I can't seem to escape the single socks. They are the bane of my life! What can one do? Of course, I can't throw any one of them away.....what if the matching sock should suddenly appear? Then I wouldn't have a complete pair because I had a wild hair and threw the other one away!
Horrors!
Consequently, I have a huge collection of single socks. It grows weekly.
I have nightmares of drowning in piles of socks.
But at least they smell good!
Hanging clothes on the line to dry.......it's a good thing.
On a completely random note- 12 year old boys have a distinct........um, aroma after they mow the lawn. Just thought I'd pass that fact along in case anyone was wondering.
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