subject: Clotheslines, Time-tested, Grandmother-approved [print this page] When I was a child, my grandmother used to wash all of her laundry by hand. She would switch between an old-style washing board and a slightly less old-style washing machine with the type of wringer that could easily catch a small child's fingers. We would watch as she worked away on the sheets with anxious anticipation for when they would go on the clothesline.
Once the sheets were hung up on the clothesline to dry, my cousins and I would chase each other through them, becoming just as damp as they were early in the game, but as the sun would pour down on us, we would dry right along with the sheets. I can still remember how soft they felt and their wonderful fragrance as we ran through them, and the peels of laughter that echoed through the yard as long as the clothes were hanging to dry.
I was watching my grandma hang the clothes one day when I told her all about how we did laundry at my house; about how my mom just moved the laundry from one machine to the other, and in about an hour, it was all dry. I asked her how come she didn't buy a machine and do it the same way.
"Honey, it's just not the same. The sun makes my clothes smell so much better, and they feel softer when I hang them out to dry."
She was right. I went home and smelled the laundry as it came out of the dryer, getting hit with static electricity in the process. Even with the fabric sheet, everything smelled like it had been cooked, not dried. The blue jeans felt about the same, but the shirts and sheets just didn't feel as soft as the clothing that came off of my grandmother's clothesline. Not only that, but grandma's clothesline didn't cost any more money once it was installed, didn't use any electricity, and was 100% environmentally friendly. There is nothing greener than that sun.
So now I am grown and have a family of my own. We just moved into a new home with all the amenities of the Twenty-First Century, including a washer and dryer, but I have some plans for the back yard. As soon as the weather gets a little warmer, we'll be landscaping our gardens, and with a little luck, there will be a nice, sunny, narrow patch leftover for a clothesline.
