Hanging your laundry on a clothesline

[sheeplady]

I grew up without a dryer at all. We were really poor and lived out in the country, and I thought only "rich" people had dryers. :laugh: We hung everything outside all the time - great big long t-post clothesline. I didn't have a dryer until I was in my mid-20s in my second apartment.

Me too. Actually my first exposure to using a dryer was when I was a late teen going to essentially a jump-start college summer program, before my senior year of high school. I looked at the machine for a few minutes, and then was pretty embarrassed when I went to ask my friend how to use it. She was actually from the south and apparently lots of people near where she lived didn't have driers, so she was really kind about it. Or at least that's what she said. This was the summer of 98.

But then I felt better because my roommate who grew up in a really posh place where they had a maid had never used a washer or a dryer. And didn't know how to fold or iron. So I was vindicated when my posh roomie tried to dump a quarter of her detergent in the machine. lol

 

[ButteMT61]

I remember when my grandma got her first electric washing machine. She used to let me put these in the washer for her. It was very cool for some reason!

 

[vintageTink]

I live in WA and it rains here nine months out of the year. No lines for me.

 

[furious]

I never had the pleasure as an adult, but I recall very well my Grandmother's clothesline and how her linens and sheets always had such a pleasant odor. Also, I remember how the clothes would freeze solid on cold days.

 

[Mabel]

Ohhh, I miss having a clothesline. I used them for years when I lived in Santa Fe, it's a very green place and everybody had them.

For many Americans, clotheslines are strongly associated with poverty. McMansion neighborhoods and other places where people who want to keep up with the Jones live often ban them. My Mother, for example, hates clotheslines, she associates them with those old Jacob Riis photographs from How The Other Half Lives.

I'll tell you a secret I learned from a policeman friend of mine in Albuquerque---outdoor clotheslines were always something he paid close attention to. He said that they indicate whether a neighborhood is high-crime or low-crime: in high crime areas, residents are much less likely to hang their clothes outside because they tend to to be stolen off the lines. The more clothes out flapping in the wind, the safer he would judge the neighborhood to be.

 

[vintageTink]

I would like to hang our clothes out, but it's far too wet.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For many Americans, clotheslines are strongly associated with poverty. McMansion neighborhoods and other places where people who want to keep up with the Jones live often ban them.

Everything that's sinful and evil and wrong about modern society is summed up in that sentence. "We don't even want to *think* about poor people, and if we ban anything that reminds us of them they'll just dry up and blow away."

They'll get my clothesline when they pry my cold, dead fingers from around the clothespins. Come on gentrifiers, I dare ya.

 

[scottyrocks]

I couldn't put up a clothesline here. The neighbors would be crying for my head. Or, at the very least, I would be a social outcast. So what, I say! hahaha

 

[John in Covina]

I have a lot of plastic hangers and hang the damp shirts on them to dry on the line. I use the dryer mostly to take lint off of dark clothes.

 

[sheeplady]

I couldn't put up a clothesline here. The neighbors would be crying for my head. Or, at the very least, I would be a social outcast. So what, I say! hahaha

You should be sure to install several different clotheslines in your backyard of every conceivable design. If they complain, you can call them sculpture art.

I don't get this "clotheslines being associated with poverty" thing. My grandmother (one of the most concerned people I ever met in my life about "looking poor") had a clothesline. Granted, she was really careful what she hung out versus what she hung in the cellar, but I could never imagine her thinking her clothesline made her look poor.

 

[Big Man]

We use a clothesline. It's not as "easy" (i.e. "convenient") as a dryer, but it sure cost a lot less!

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was usual on my street to have the clothesline right on the front porch, flying like a flag. Lace-curtain types were careful to hang the sheets on the rope closest to the street, and the underwear behind that, but anybody who came around saying clotheslines looked "common" would be laughed into oblivion.

 

[Mabel]

I don't get this "clotheslines being associated with poverty" thing. My grandmother (one of the most concerned people I ever met in my life about "looking poor") had a clothesline. Granted, she was really careful what she hung out versus what she hung in the cellar, but I could never imagine her thinking her clothesline made her look poor.

[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/824/clothesline.jpg/] Uploaded with ImageShack.us[/URL]

This picture, taken in the old NYC tenement slums circa 1900, is exactly the kind of thing my Mother's entire family thinks of when they see clotheslines. Maybe it's different for different parts of the US, or different generations. It's a lot like recycling---when they were children in the 50's, only the very poorest families they knew recycled, so recycling cans/bottles has a strong stigma to my Mother and her siblings. My cousins and I, being born in the 70's and 80's, don't have these stigmas associated with these behaviors, so we recycle and hang clothes all the time. We're all from Northern California, so maybe it's unique to that area or something. [huh]

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I have had a clothes line for so long no matter where my house had been (State location as well as City or Boon Docks), as for me, there are just too many articles of clothing or linen that never belong in the dryer at all, and some that never will be placed into a washing machine. Both a washer and a dryer can do a negative affect on many items that are in need of being cleaned. In the Winter, the clothes line is currently in the basement, employed daily and given much praise of use! What I call, "clippy hangers" are used for small items, and shirts or pants are hung to dry on a normal hanger, large items get suspended from several "clippy" hangers so that there is not too much weight to pull off the spring "clippy" part of the hanger.

My dryer is used very little, perhaps a few large bath towels to fluff them up, or another large item or two, but not very often. I also find for myself, when anything that has been placed on a line to dry is ironed, it seems to hold a crease better than if it was machine dried.

Clothe lines are also a good subject matter for using when you have "visiting small children"....as you can show them the clothes line and right away explain that any misbehavior on their part, will give them a stay attached to the clippy hangers as a form of directing them to be well mannered. You would be surprised to see how quickly some young children grasp the concept and decline to behave in a negative manner! I have yet to have to use the clippy hangers on a youngster visiting, and have had some thankful input from parents that decide to bring their little ones to visit, and desire to make sure they install a clothes line when they get home to steer off any future problems with their children. There was never a rule of use when it comes to a clothes line.....seems a real blessing to have at least one!

 

[sheeplady]

This picture, taken in the old NYC tenement slums circa 1900, is exactly the kind of thing my Mother's entire family thinks of when they see clotheslines. Maybe it's different for different parts of the US, or different generations. It's a lot like recycling---when they were children in the 50's, only the very poorest families they knew recycled, so recycling cans/bottles has a strong stigma to my Mother and her siblings. My cousins and I, being born in the 70's and 80's, don't have these stigmas associated with these behaviors, so we recycle and hang clothes all the time. We're all from Northern California, so maybe it's unique to that area or something. [huh]

Maybe it's rural versus urban or even a generational thing. My grandmother (born in the mid-twenties) grew up in a rural environment. And while she was very afraid of "looking poor" she was also very frugal (which let my grandparents have the appearance of living beyond their means). I doubt she saw a dryer until sometime in the early 70s- they just weren't that common unless you went to a laundry mat where she lived. I don't think she even had an automatic washer until sometime in the 80s; she would have rather saved that money from a dryer and use it to buy jewelry or a set of designer clothes.

About recycling: my mom was born in the 40s, and she is the most rabid rabid recycler you have ever seen. But she was also kind of a hippy in the 1960s. When I went to college, she found out my college only recycled 1 & 2 plastics. Where she lives recycles 1 through 6. She told me to save all my 3 through 6 plastic garbage for when I came home so that it didn't end up in a landfill "killing the earth." She was serious, she even brought me a box to store it in and a special brush to clean it out so it wouldn't smell up my dorm room. She was pretty upset when I told her that no, I wouldn't be stockpiling garbage in my tiny living space.

One of my girl friends (who is quite a bit older than me) commented that recycling is just not habit for her generation, and asked about my mom. Needless to say, I have stories about how excited my mom was when they introduced recycling in the early 90s where my mom lives. She was already big on recycling soda cans, and just about died of joy when they started recycling plastic and glass.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We've had a bottle deposit law here since 1976 -- so there was only a very short window of about six years in the early-mid seventies where "one way bottles" were used, so nobody here ever really got out of the habit of returning their empties. It's something that's always been a part of life here, and always will be. We always recycled paper and metal too -- even before there was institutionalized recycling. Paper bags were always saved, neatly folded, and stored under the kitchen cupboards, to be used for lining the garbage can, carrying lunches, making covers for schoolbooks, and all such things as that. Cans had their ends cut out and were stomped flat and sold to the scrap-metal man for a nickel a pound or something like that. Grease was kept in a coffee can on the back of the stove for frying eggs and such. Clam and lobster shells were ground up into powder and scattered in the garden. And on and on. Everybody we knew did this sort of thing, and when "recycling" became a watchword everyone reacted with "yeah, so what? Tell us something we don't know." We didn't think of it as "saving the earth," we just thought of it as what you were supposed to do.

 

[Mabel]

About recycling: my mom was born in the 40s, and she is the most rabid rabid recycler you have ever seen. But she was also kind of a hippy in the 1960s. When I went to college, she found out my college only recycled 1 & 2 plastics. Where she lives recycles 1 through 6. She told me to save all my 3 through 6 plastic garbage for when I came home so that it didn't end up in a landfill "killing the earth." She was serious, she even brought me a box to store it in and a special brush to clean it out so it wouldn't smell up my dorm room. She was pretty upset when I told her that no, I wouldn't be stockpiling garbage in my tiny living space.

One of my girl friends (who is quite a bit older than me) commented that recycling is just not habit for her generation, and asked about my mom. Needless to say, I have stories about how excited my mom was when they introduced recycling in the early 90s where my mom lives. She was already big on recycling soda cans, and just about died of joy when they started recycling plastic and glass.

That's interesting, My Mother's entire family are all rather conservative. None of them were hippies back in the day---they never identified with that part of boomer culture, and recycling is not habitual for them, either. Where my Mother lives, in rural Montana, there is no way to recycle, even if she wanted to.

 

[sheeplady]

We've had a bottle deposit law here since 1976 -- so there was only a very short window of about six years in the early-mid seventies where "one way bottles" were used, so nobody here ever really got out of the habit of returning their empties. It's something that's always been a part of life here, and always will be. We always recycled paper and metal too -- even before there was institutionalized recycling. Paper bags were always saved, neatly folded, and stored under the kitchen cupboards, to be used for lining the garbage can, carrying lunches, making covers for schoolbooks, and all such things as that. Cans had their ends cut out and were stomped flat and sold to the scrap-metal man for a nickel a pound or something like that. Grease was kept in a coffee can on the back of the stove for frying eggs and such. Clam and lobster shells were ground up into powder and scattered in the garden. And on and on. Everybody we knew did this sort of thing, and when "recycling" became a watchword everyone reacted with "yeah, so what? Tell us something we don't know." We didn't think of it as "saving the earth," we just thought of it as what you were supposed to do.

There are actually people who have gotten into trouble with the authorities for not producing enough garbage... that just boggles my mind. The clam and lobster shells can be used to feed chickens and the fat can also be used for lighting to cut down on electricity use. Paper is a good fuel source, particularly if you don't have the luxury of central heat- paper can also be used in gardening as a brown source. As far as cans- if you can your own food you can eliminate most of your can use, except for the tops (or the rubber bands if you use all-glass jars, which make great ties, particularly for young trees). The tops themselves can be used to patch metal things.

I think my mom's excitement for the recycling was that it was finally catching up to all the plastics in the world. There is a ton more plastic now than there was 20 years ago- in everything from the lining within the cans of food to the inserts in your cereal box. There is hardly anything packaged in plain paper as far as food stuffs anymore. The best thing to do is simply avoid buying these things in the first place, but honestly, if you have to buy something that is non-biodegradable, it needs to be recycled. I've pulled far too much plastic out of the earth in my young days (where I grew up, useless materials tended to go in dumps on your own property until they introduced garbage pickup, and the people who owned the land before my parents were trashy people). Between the plastic and the bed springs, I've had enough of people's crudding up the land for my entire lifetime...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never understood why most of the stuff that comes in plastic has to come in plastic anyway. Paper milk cartons were just as good as plastic jugs -- I still get my milk in paper and don't see any reason to do otherwise. Laundry detergent in plastic jugs? Really? What was wrong with cardboard boxes? (I buy bar soap and shred it into the washing machine with a grater, so all I have to throw away is a paper wrapper.) Vacuum-wrapped meats? What's wrong with getting it over the counter, wrapped in butcher paper?

I take one small bag of garbage to the dump here, every three weeks -- most of that consisting of what I've scooped out of the cat's litter box. The Garbage Police will be after me for sure.

We used to play on the slope behind my great-grandparents' house, where they threw all their trash for the forty years they lived there. I assembled quite an impressive collection of Listerine and Lysol bottles, Pond's Cold Cream jars, broken combs, and such like relics -- and once terrified my mother by coming home with the jawbone of a horse.

 

[sheeplady]

I don't understand the reliance on plastic either. We got along for decades with waxed paper, cardboard, metal, and glass. The most infuriating thing to me is cereal (of which I typically eat very little but have had to eat a lot of lately because of life circumstances). Why does a box of cereal need a plastic bag inside of it? It used to made of waxed paper and you could reuse it a few times. I don't remember cereal getting mushy or stale when I was a kid.

It's like lining the cans in plastic.... why do they need to do that? We didn't die from the old cans.

I once pulled an entire small dessert plate (un-chipped and not at all abused) out of one of the dumping spots- I use it for special occasions. I say dumping spots, because there were over 20 of them on the property. Urgh. Normal people put their trash in one place back then, not all over 30 acres. Although the most infuriating thing was the property my parents purchased in the 1990s- the previous residents had continued to use various dumps on the property until they had passed away, including dumping motor oil (that's a fun thing to find in a half rotted jug), car parts, and garbage bags full of garbage. Yuck. The earth might spit out rocks but it swallows plastic.