Now that we have a washing machine, we can finally start drying our clothes outside on our lovely rural-issue clothesline. We couldn’t do this in London because a) our back garden was about the size of an egg box and b) diesel particulates are not exactly my favourite post-laundry fabric conditioner. But now we can enjoy the sight of our freshly laundered clothes blowing rurally in the breeze without having the bathroom and every single radiator in the house taken up with drying underwear. And we can finally air-dry sheets and duvet covers, without having to lug them down to the laundrette to emit their weight in CO2 as they tumble-dried. I tell you, if you look carefully you can see my smug green glow from London
But there are a few little refinements we’re having to learn in order to perfect our new laundry regime. Like listening to the weather forecast before putting on a load AND paying attention all the way to the part where it gets to Scotland without getting distracted trying to visualise a line drawn from the Severn to the Wash. And like looking out of the window and not thinking ‘oh look it’s raining,’ but learning to launch oneself out of the house like a jet-propelled laundry-rescuing rocket before it ends up wetter than it started. And – as we learned just this afternoon – not hanging the white sheet right up close next to the bird feeder at the end of the clothes line. Laundry flapping brightly in the breeze might be a delight to my senses, but it seems it scares the crap out of the birds…
Ah, I remember the days of owning a house with a garden and a washing line. That mad dash outside when it started raining and, worst of all, washing all over the place inside drying when it was raining. Now I have a spare bathroom I don’t use and all the drying gets done in there. Much better
By the way, if you fold the duvet cover and bedsheet then hang them over a clothes horse for a few days they dry perfectly. I’ve got mine drying now.
Aah – but also watch out for those windy days – the turbines are located around here for a reason.
Our old rotary drier could not cope with a large wet sheet when the wind decided to go into overdrive and snapped in two.
I love having a washing line, but we still end up with all the socks and pants on clothes horses in the spare room.
We have the kind of wind that wraps the clothes around the line, rather than blows them away. We also have the haar to contend with – more sneaky than rain but just as wet.
He(l)en, clearly using her new alias, probably doesn’t realise that the problem was *two* sheets on the line at the same time.
Clearly a case of two sheets to the wind …
(sorry, couldn’t resist)