Skip to main content

i know you think i'm crazy, but i LOVE my clothesline.

okay, I’m about to totally blow your mind. no for real. I can’t even tell you how much I LOVE hanging my clothes to dry, outside, in the sun, in the fresh air, with actual clothespins, on actual clotheslines.

if you’ve known me for any length of time, you know that this obsession goes way back. like, 11.5 years back, to when my brand new husband whisked me and my 5 year old away from the suburbs of seattle, where I’d lived my whole life, to a mythological place in rural ohio called a “farm town”. we lived in a 100 year old house that had these amazing metal t-posts in the backyard. he asked if I wanted to use them, and I thought, what the heck?! So he bought me some clothespins and strung up the lines between them.

and I fell in love.

I hung out our clothes as long as it was possible to do so… Probably from about late april to early october. the thing that is super awesome about ohio weather is the wind. there is almost always wind, so your clothes get dry quick, and without a lot of stiffness from just hanging still. the thing that is super sucky about ohio weather is the storms (at least in regards to line drying clothes). there were plenty of times I had to go flying out of the house and yank the clothes down while dodging fat raindrops because a storm came in suddenly. or I was out somewhere and started hearing distant thunder rumbling, remembering that I had clothes on the line, and calculating whether or not I had time to make it home and pull them off the line or if I should just forget it and figure I would dry them for the second time after it quit raining and the sun came back out.

I also had a baby during that time. and there is nothing quite so precious as seeing baby clothes drying on the line.

at any rate, after 2 years, we moved back the the suburbs of seattle and lived in a condo. THE HORROR!! I did go to target and invest in some accordion racks that I sometimes put on my deck.

not the same.

after a hellish year in the condo, we moved to a house, still in the suburbs, but far enough out that we didn’t have HOA rules imposed on us that forbid the use of clotheslines. (I have lots of very nasty words for those folks.) Every spring, I begged, pleaded, dropped hints, etc. to no avail. money was tight. time was tight. we had a flock of little kids… so, once again, I improvised.


not the same.

but after 5 years in that house, we moved again. this time even further out. not quite rural, but almost. we have lots of nature going on out here. at any rate, after about a year in this house, my begging, pleading, and hint dropping finally paid off, and I got my clothesline. it was LOOOONG, and went from the shed in one corner of the yard to a tree somewhere in the middle.


it had it’s downsides (the stuff hung on the end under the tree risked birds pooping on it, and it sagged in the middle because it was so long. this led me to be creative with a fisher-price basketball hoop to prop it up in the middle. but that would blow over (even with water in the base) on windy days, dragging the whole line down with it. and it killed the grass in a 2’x2’ square. but it worked.

so, almost the same.



































however, after 3 years of using this line, I still kinda sorta really wanted my t-posts. AND, a totally amazing thing happened! a series of windstorms decimated our fence. related? not so much. but, the insurance company gave us a bunch of money to fix the fence, so dave went out and bought a bunch of wood and tools. and made many trips to home depot…

are you thinking what I’m thinking?

thank goodness he was!

last sunday, the kids were harassing us to take them to the park. just as we were about to leave, I had a brilliant idea.

how about I take them to the park and YOU go to home depot and buy the stuff you need to make my t-posts.

so he did!

and then I had this week off of work for spring break, and the weather was sunny, and…

ta da!!!

I am one happy mama!

stay tuned because I have all sorts of clothesline tips and advice to dispense so that you, too, will want to line dry your clothes!

Comments

you may like...

fillet of sole

so i sat micah at the table today to eat his lunch.  he had a plate of food, a fork to eat it with, he was buckled into his seat, and had shoes on his feet.  i left the room and came back to find him out of his chair, done with his food, and this scene:    want a closer look?  i know you do…     yes, that’s a fork IN the shoe.           have i mentioned he’s a total houdini?  the straps are still buckled and it’s impossible to get them tight enough to keep him in.  but i’m loving that he left a shoe behind.  it’s so cinderella. i’m kind of thinking at this point that i should maybe look inside the shoe, just to be sure he didn’t stash any of his lunch in there. i’ve said it before, i never claimed to have normal kids. at least he ate…

for my not-so-american friends

i didn't have an actual roll w/ the green plaid on it, but i found a refill and an empty roll in my junk drawer (yeah, i know, that should tell me something).  but even the empty one says 'scotch' on it.  there you go!  SCOTCH TAPE!

does home ec even exist anymore?

my last post got me thinking about how i somehow missed 'learning' all of those things which are essential in running a successful home. i'm wondering who dropped the ball on this (because, i can't possibly take responsibility for my own shortcomings here). i guess traditionally, one learns these things from their parents. i suppose i did learn a lot of my domestic skills at home. for example, the husband is supposed to eat the leftovers in the fridge. when making a bed, the 'top' of the top sheet goes down so that when you fold the edge over the blanket, the 'top' side is then up. why this matters when you are just going to cover the whole thing with a pillow and comforter is totally beyond me. but that's how you do it. so yes, my mother taught me how to iron, do laundry, clean a toilet, etc. my dad taught me how to plant a garden, mow a lawn, appreciate baseball, etc. and then there's home ec. do people still take home ec? i took it

i’m sure i will offend all sorts people with this…

… but i just don’t get why the entire world is so torn up about the death of michael jackson. yes, he had an insanely successful career as a singer/entertainer/pop star. yes, he took a lot of that to a whole new level. yes, i remember thriller and doing the moonwalk. yes, i remember wanting one of those red leather jackets, and one of those sparkly white gloves. however… i’m also wondering why everyone else is seeming to forget how he bleached his skin (and then had a big hit stating that it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white… always wondered about that one), underwent so much plastic surgery that he barely looked human anymore, made crotch-grabbing an acceptable dance move, hung his kid over a balcony, showed up for court in his pajamas, and, oh yeah, was accused of child molestation HOW MANY TIMES??? this was a VERY disturbed man. i have never understood why being a celebrity excuses people from upholding the same morals and standards that we expect of normal people. i w

blessed with good oral health!

well, i made it another 6 months with no cavities! i had a dentist appointment today. my second in six months, but prior to that, i don’t think i’d been in 4+ years. oops. i was much less nervous for this appointment than i was for the last one. last time i figured my luck had run out and because i’d been bad about seeing the dentist, this time i’d really ‘pay’ for it. but no. other than a little excessive scraping of tartar (4 years’ worth), everything was fine. around the time i turned 20, i pretty much assumed, every time i went to the dentist, that this was finally my time for a cavity. i mean, how long really, can one person go without ANY cavities? well, now i’m kind of over that and figure that maybe my teeth are just impenetrable or something. at any rate, every time the dentist comes in at the end of my cleaning, pokes around for a minute and tells me my teeth look great, i breathe a sigh of relief and feel tremendous gratitude for my good teeth. the no cavities thing is only