Sunday, September 23, 2007

Out of the mouths of babes ...

Said to me by my 7 year old this week: You look like a poor housewife!

While trying not to laugh, I simply said, well, I am a housewife!

We had this conversation on the deck as I was hanging up some laundry on my drying lines. Yes, this week I have discovered the joy of line drying my laundry. Which, really, is sort of dumb since winter is coming and all. You think I might have discovered this, oh, at the start of summer with lots of warm days to take advantage of!



But I have discovered some very important things. Despite thinking all things would come off the line stiff, very few items actually come off feeling that way. Clothes do smell good when they dry that way. And thanks to my highly inefficient dryer, most of our clothes are actually drying faster outside than they would in the dryer! I kid you now, more than a few items have dried in less than 30 minutes on the line. The average run time for my dryer - 90 minutes. Longer with jeans and towels. I have actually done more laundry line drying this week than I normally do waiting for our dryer. I even asked dh to figure out a way to do this in the winter-time (although realistically without us adding on to the house, there is no place to add some lines inside the house!). I tell you, I do wish I had discovered how fabulous this is in April instead of mid-September, but what's done is done. And now I know. And every warm day we get from here on out will probably be dubbed laundry day for me.

I just have to tell you, I have now run 7 loads of laundry this week, and have run the dryer a mere 2 hours time (I am not hanging up all our clothes. Frankly, the neighbors don't need to see our undies flapping in the wind! Nor am I hanging up the dishcloths, I don't have enough room or clips for those guys. And some clothes I am running for about 15 minutes to soften them up a bit).

Which brings me to another point. My mom said she would not be allowed to line dry in her neighborhood. The covenant bans it. And she was surprised none of my neighbors had complained to me about it yet. Is this really true? If you lived next to me, would you be complaining? The clothes are hanging on part of my deck, in the backyard, can not be seen from the road and are not flapping near the property lines. I can't imagine why someone would complain about it frankly. Of all the things to complain about, some laundry, really? I mean, it's not loud. It's doesn't cause a smell. It doesn't pollute. It doesn't interfere with anything going on at their house. Now I'm a little bit paranoid that I have ticked off my neighbors by drying my clothes on my deck. Although, I'm not that worried about it because as I said, I can't understand what the problem would be.

So what about you? Or your neighborhood?

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:03 PM

    I live in the country, more like boonies... so no worry about hanging my clothes our here and getting fussed at. My only problems are birds pooing on them and bees or spiders getting in them.

    I can dry the clothes on the line faster too than my dryer can. I get a lot more laundry done that way. Take a few more minutes to hang them but it takes a lot less time to get them dried. Plus I can fold them as I take them off the line which makes it easier to sort and put away.

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  2. Anonymous8:59 AM

    I love line drying. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment and it just wouldn't look right on my balcony.

    Some home owner's associations do have rules against line drying, which I think are stupid...actually, I think a lot of HOA rules are stupid, but I can appreciate why they are in place. I just think HOAs go over board sometimes.

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  3. Yeah, line drying is banned where I live too. I bet if I (meaning my handy husband) could find a way to put up a retractable line on our covered patio, no one would know -- but then, the clothes wouldn't get the breeze or the sun, and could end up being stiff.

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  4. Heh, yeah, I thought it was the weirdest thing when I heard that some people have LAWS against laundry on lines. That makes a lot of sense, eh? I hang my jeans and diapers out because they take the longest in the dryer- everything else goes in the dryer because I"m lazy ;)

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  5. Anonymous9:05 AM

    I am not sure if my HOA allows line drying or not. I'll have to check into that. One of my neighbors made a snide comment to me about our rabbit hutch. I am sure line drying wouldn't go over too well in my neighborhood. @@

    Soon enough we'll have a privacy fence and I can do whatever I want :P~~~ <-at my HOA

    I intended on moving to a rural community...still trying to figure out how I ended up in a subdivision,lol.

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  6. Anonymous1:11 PM

    that's crazy....I line dried my clothes often in MI, and hope to here too if we can get a line up somewhere....My neighbors never complained, but I did once when my clothes were soaked by the neighbors sprinkler UGH

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  7. Anonymous5:38 PM

    I live in the UK & most people line dry when they can. It is in the mid 30s F today with a breeze & I have just bought in my washing from outside. Nearly dry & smells great - towels very soft. Have hung the slightly damp things over chairs etc & will be dry by the morning. I am not obessive about line drying though - do use a dryer when wet!!

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Seeing your comments makes me smile! Thank you so much =)