Friday, April 25, 2008

*Sniff!* Ahhhhh!

At long last, I have a clothesline hung up outdoors again! It has been 3 years since I hung clothes outside to dry, but not 3 years since I've line-dried my clothing. We have a clothesline in the basement by the wood stove, so I use that mostly. Anyway, I bought a pulley for being able to hang a line way up high just like I saw one of my neighbors have, and it sat in it's brown bag for ages. With all the posts I've been seeing lately about outdoors clothes drying, my soul has been itching to get my own line up.

Yesterday, I got out the pulley and started eyeing where I wanted it, but it didn't look feasible. Hubby suggested using the light pole and stringing the line to the dogwood. Not my first choice, but it'll do. I already had a load washed and waiting to be hung and Oldest helped with pinning the clothing. There are multiple green things happening here: look closer...
See? Sorry, too close! Forgive the blurry shot, I couldn't get the camera to focus on the knot instead of the background, but can you see what I used for the line?


How about now? Yeah! Telephone wire! How many of you have miles and miles of old telephone wire lying around the house that have no usefulness anymore? With the onslaught of cordless phones and cell phones, there is no need for long telephone extension cords. We've had these wires sitting in a box for the past 3 years, not wanting to throw them away, but not needing them either, until now!

So, multiple green things happening? 1- Recycling telephone wire; 2- Drying clothes outside which reduces our energy usage and saves us money; 3- We are re-using an old Lard tin bucket for the clothespin holder. My soul is at peace.

4 comments:

barefoot gardener said...

That is so awesome! I would never have thought of using telephone wire. I bet it doesn't stretch very much, either.

Lisa C. said...

Cool. I've been hanging our wet clothes except towels/socks on shower cutain rods with hangers in both bathrooms so we don't see increased electricy bills. Also our clothes I hang will last longer without being burned in the dryer.

Wendy said...

Bravo! On your creativity. I've always known that "necessity is the mother of invention", and it's very cool to see it in practice ;).

I love my clothesline. I don't know how I did it all of those years without one ... and our electric bill has been going down rather steadily. It's very cool!

Lantana said...

Good for you! Your new baby will always have sweet smelling clothes to wear!

I always hung my diapers on the clothesline. I made my own flannel diapers with flannel that was napped on both sides. I didn't think anything of it, it was the thing to do in those days. One of my newly made diapers looked so silly on a new baby! Giggle! These white flannel diapers always smelled sweet from being dried outside. Now I see how my grand daughter buys disposables and think back to all the hard work we had in those days. Sigh.

LANTANA