The Art of Hanging Laundry

A year ago in September Hubby was working in Dallas and coming home on the weekends.  During that time, my dryer pooped out.   "Screw it!" I thought, "I don't need no stinking dryer."  I had been meaning to start hanging my laundry, and decided to take the opportunity to give it a try.  To this day I still have not replaced the dryer.   (How WT is that, to have broken major appliances sitting around?)  I have had to make some adjustments, but it has not been at all difficult - and we generate a lot of laundry. My six-year-old Sugar Snap has two to three wardrobe changes a day (look out Cher!), and Hubby changes out of his bidness clothes into more comfy almost every day.  We also do not use paper towels or paper napkins, we use cloth, so those have to be laundered.  Whereas I used to do several gigantic loads of laundry each week on one day (I very cleverly called it Laundry Day), now I do laundry every day that it isn't raining.  When I wake up I sort one load and put it in the washing machine and try to get it hung up by 10am to ensure that it gets dry.  My understanding is that in some parts of the world it is possible to get two consecutive loads dry in a day, but down here on the Gulf Coast where the humidity is 90+% that would be a challenge.  Sweet Potato (my 11 year old) brings the laundry inside at the end of the afternoon at around 5pm.  The only drawback I have experienced is that I like fluffy towels and line-dried towels come out crispy crunchy.  When we took a little mini vacation at a rent house in Galveston last year Sweet Potato crawled under the staircase and refused to leave.  It took some time to figure out why she was so hesitant, and she finally confessed "I don't want to leave the fluffy towels!"  No amount of fabric softener will help, so it might be worth having a dryer just for the sake of a luxurious bath.  Hanging the laundry has become  one of the chores I most enjoy.  The freshness of the clean laundry is unrivaled by any of the perfumey fabric softeners.  I always take a step back after I am done hanging and take a good look because I love the way the clothes look hanging on the line.  It's a little bit different every time.  It's art.

Sugar Snap playing in the laundry line.