September 8, 2008: It's The Frugal Girl's Fault!

The Frugal Girl has given me a guilt complex. All week she has been blogging about cold water washing and line drying. I'm pretty good about the washing part, although I do use warm for whites, but I've been using my dryer almost daily this summer. Hey, I have an excuse! We bought our Arizona property in April of 2004. One of the first things I did was buy a clothesline, because about 99% of the time the weather down there is perfect for drying outside. Only once since then have I had to make a trip to the laundromat to dry my clothes, so I think I've done quite well. Unfortunately, the clothesline I bought, the only one I could find at Home Depot, was a piece of junk.


And that's exactly where it ended up the following winter, in the junk yard.

I was telling my dear little sister about it, and she said she happened to have the kind I was looking for, brand new, in the box, and that I could have it. So the winter of 2005-06 I used her clothesline, which was the kind I wanted, but....it just happened to be missing some of its parts, so I had to substitute 2x2s for poles. Needless to say, I was NOT satisfied. Recycled that one to a neighbor who just wanted the lines.

All this time, I had a lovely, sturdy umbrella type clothesline in my backyard here in WA. And I actually used it! However, I also had a very nice dryer here, and none in Arizona (we live a very simple life through the winter months). So the following winter my clothesline made the trip south, and that is where it remained.

I was perfectly happy using my dryer every wash day in the summer, and my clothesline in the winter.

Until this week.

So Saturday I went out to the garage and found a fifty-foot rope. I took it out to that big, never used dog kennel, the one that sits in the corner of my garden and may someday be a giant, expensive trellis for pole beans. I looped it and tied it and stretched it back and forth and...I made myself a clothesline!

Frugal Girl, I hung my laundry to dry today. Aren't you proud of me?

Well....it's a start!



12 comments:

  1. Good for you! I'd line dry but I'm in Florida - which means it would never actually dry and would get mildew after a few days LOL.
    ~Crystabel

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  2. Well, yes, in your case I would definitely use my dryer! Just don't let The Frugal Girl catch you LOL.

    Granny

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  3. Granny - I can remember hanging clothes outside to dry when I was young. It was ok, but man those towels were stiff!

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  4. EG, you sound like Mr. H! He hates the stiff jeans and towels. In AZ there is usually a warm breeze blowing, so the clothes come off the line just as they would from the dryer. I love rough bath towels and the smell of the sheets when they come off the line.

    Granny

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  5. You go girl! Its great to see the your skills working over time and to build a clothesline out of just a 50ft piece of rope...Im very impressed!! Since I started using my new clothesline around 18 months ago my poer bills have gone down and I just love the smell of the laundry coming off the line...it smells so fresh to me and Im not going back to that dryer at all! I got my clothesline at http://www.urbanclotheslines.com and they had all sorts of lines to choose from. If we can only get more people using a clothesline at home think of all that power and money we could all be saving!!...Keep up the great work Granny!!!!

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  6. Yeah for us, Garth! I actually filled that 50 feet of rope on Saturday, but my camera batteries died LOL! I had to round up some sheets to wash just for the "photo op" yesterday *g*.

    Granny

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  7. Ohhh, I'm so proud of you!!! Good job. :)

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  8. Thank you for "prodding" me, Kristen!

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  9. I have the exact same clothes line from Home Depot and you are right it is junk! But it is all I have for the moment. I long for the kind we had when I was a little girl- do they even exsist anymore as my husband and I can't find them!

    There is nothing like going to bed on sheets that have been hung out to dry. I try to get all my clothesline drying in when I can cause you sure can't hang clothes out to dry in Western Oregon in the winter!

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  10. My old clothesline, the one I use in Arizona, is probably 20 years old and still just like new. It's an umbrella type, not the upside-down umbrella like the junky one. Even that kind seems so flimsy compared to my old one.

    I really want a T-post clothesline, a nice long one with about 6 lines. It's so nice to just start at one end and work your way down the line, and even my king sized sheets would fit.

    Granny

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  11. My sil has one that you just tug to you: sort of a pulley at both ends if that makes sense. I'm trying to figure a way to put up a line in my family room. When it starts getting rainy out here, we start using the woodstove. I keep a kettle on it to keep it from drying out the whole house, but it's not a good fix. Don't you think running a line in the front room would be a great way to get the best of both worlds? I'd just have to get it up and down b/4 hubby arrives. He doesn't want to deal with moving around the line in the room, can't blame him actually.

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  12. Well, carolynp, I used to string a line across the bedroom to hang baby diapers, so why not? Yes, we had CLOTH diapers when mine were babies, LOL. I used to have one on my patio that was on a pulley. I'd pull it out and attach it to a post an the other side of the patio, but it never worked really well. It seems like it would always bind up, so it was just easier to tie a rope around the posts and use that. Maybe you could devise a way to make that line in the living room more attractive to the husband. Like using the clothes pins to hang Doritos or bags of popcorn and stuff. I know that would please Mr. H!

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