Yet another laundry post

I love my clothesline. I enjoy hanging clothes out and I adore the fresh line-dried smell that lingers on them. My regular readers will know that I have a bit of an obsession about this, actually. Once we get to November though, it gets trickier to get a load of laundry completely dry outside and if it's very cold, not only do the clothes freeze, so do my hands. Winter starts for me when I give up and start hanging clothes inside. Hanging clothes inside is definitely second best - they don't get that fresh air smell, but there are no bird dropping worries, either. I have a pretty strong aversion to using the dryer as it seems not unlike burning money to dry clothes instead of just letting ordinary air (which in winter around here could always use a bit of moisture) do the job. In addition to the environmental and financial benefits of line drying, slackers like me enjoy the fact that clothes do not get more wrinkled the longer they linger on the drying rack, unlike the dryer where a few hours of neglect results in the dreaded dryer wrinkles.

I think we are unique in North America in regarding the coal-fired (or nuclear-powered, here in Ontario) clothes dryer as an essential item in the home. Even I, with all my evangelical line drying, have one. Obviously, our electricity rates are still too low if ordinary people still use them. I wonder what other coal-fired gadgets we'll come to find ludicrous instead of necessary when energy prices are double or triple what they are now.

By the way, a really great website about saving electricity is Michael Bluejay's Saving Electricity site. It is loaded with information and a fair bit of attitude ("only losers set their AC below 80") which makes it a pretty entertaining read, not to mention very useful.

Ok, I promise this is the last post about drying clothes. Really.

Airing my clean laundry

I've posted before on my unnatural fascination with clotheslines. Well, I have not been cured of this fetish and I now am the proud owner of this super-deluxe clothesline. You can't see the silent bearings or virtually frictionless operation, but I can assure you it provides a wonderful clothes hanging experience. I don't think I could really think of a house as a home until there was proper provision for hanging clothes.

My belle-soeur (don't the French have a nice way of saying sister-in-law?), Danielle, was inspired by my previous clothesline post to create this amazing painting. It even has an engraved label saying "Bev's clothesline". I was completely blown away by Danielle's skill and thoughtfulness when she gave the painting to me.

Good clean fun

I appreciate a well hung clothesline. I admire women who maintain order in their lines and I fancy myself one of them. I know that we can be an intimidating bunch. I lived, for years, next door to a woman who I imagined was scrutinizing my clothesline closely (not you, Kathy!) and it made me nervous. My problem, I know.

I don't actually know any men who regularly hang clothes, and I really can't imagine any man I know hanging a decent line. I was once accused, by one of these men, of being anal for pairing the socks on a line. As if they magically pair themselves at any point in the laundry process.


My fantasy clothesline is attached to a white clapboard house on the edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Of course, the sun is always shining, and it's always a good drying day. In my fantasy the freezing rain never blows sideways and it never rains on almost dry clothes.

This post will no doubt generate a few hits from googlers who are most definitely not looking for pictures of clotheslines.