Ever since I saw this post from Ashli at Mini Manor Blog, about a retractable clothesline, I knew I’d like to try one for ourselves. It’s old fashioned to hang clothes out to dry, isn’t it? It wasn’t until this post that I remembered that my grandma had a clothesline in her backyard years ago. I remember playing with the basket and clothespins.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the convenience of a dryer, but I also like the idea of being green. We cloth diaper and I’ve read a few things about the suns UV rays being great for brightening, removing stains, and even sanitizing them. There is a great post from The Pistachio Project, showing a before and after picture of a stained diaper and the suns effect on it. There’s also the energy efficient benefits, meaning I don’t have to be running my dryer as much, saving me some cash. Besides, our covers, wetbags, and pail liners shouldn’t go in the dryer anyway, because the heat can wear out the waterproof PUL fabric.
I was looking at a couple different clothesline through Amazon but was dawdling on getting one since I couldn’t get a firm answer from Chris on whether to do the line or not. We live in an HOA and were thinking we might get push back from the board. Chris used to be on the board, so theoretically we are immune from some rules, however a recent letter making us fix the cat-caused bent blinds in our spare room says otherwise. Anyway, a stroll through the Home Goods check out line found me the new owner of a $10 retractable, indoor-outdoor clothesline. Yippee skippy!
You only live once, right. We’re such “rebels” that we put the line up regardless of what the HOA might say. We secured it to the wooden frame near the backdoor. It swivels and lays flat against the house when it’s not in use and the cord tucks away too. We put the hook on the fence line. We wanted to keep it closer to the house, however our soil is only about 4″ deep before it hits rock hard ground, so placing a stake was a no-go.
The first day we put out diapers and wetbags they were mostly dry in about 2 hours! How fantastic! Two hours of hung diapers isn’t too much of an eyesore. They were really stiff but a few minutes on the air dry setting in our dryer and they were in good shape.
Today I put some completely wet ones out and it took about 3-4 hours to dry.Then I out put some that had been in the dryer on a low setting. They were soft from the initial dryer but then got the benefit of the sun for a couple hours.
So there you have it-our little clothesline. I could be mean and say that there should be no problem with this clothesline because half the residents of our complex would remember what it was like before electric dryers were invented, and hanging clothes on a line was an everyday thing.
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What your neighbors will remember is the day they got their first dryer. The old way included rolling the wet clothes through a wringer. My parents used their clothes line (eventually) for hanging beef strips in gauze. Actually it was deer and produced the best jerkey. A clothes line can be used for much more than wet clothes. Cracks me up, you are going back in time. I think going back is a good thing. Enjoy.