I have a new laundry, albeit a rented one, and it has a ROTARY clothesline (BLISS! alright, RENTED bliss) that stands in it's own patch of very soft, green, grass. There are no trees overhead, so no bird poo on the washing.
I often hear magpies, kookaburras and cows. They are not rented, thankfully -- just a part of the Ambience Package that came with the house.
Granted, the clothesline stands on the edge of a 2 foot drop, so I have to be careful not to blindly follow the washing around the line, but that's a small price to pay for the pleasure I get, hanging the wet washing and bringing in the dry.
Because it is a pleasure. The grass underfoot, the breeze, the sounds of animal life, the smell of sun-dried cotton, all combine to put me in a Happy Place.
It was not always so.
My last laundry (also rented) was an afterthought, jammed into a space between the kitchen and the carport. Still, it was serviceable. The clothesline was not.
It was one of those horrible clacketty things you pull down from the wall (in this case, sometimes literally) and the wires were actually wires.
Forget your plastic-covered, easy-to-clean convenience. This stuff had road grime, birdpoo and cobwebs entrenched in every inch.
As an added bonus, it had snarly frizzy wires that had almost managed to escape, and these would stab me in the fingers or poke holes in the cloth if I allowed my attention to wander.
Unsurprisingly, my dryer got a big workout in that house.
My friend has that same kind of clothesline. (cousins, we think)
And we talked about how we avoid using the laundries and clotheslines if they're ugly or dirty or just plain don't work.
I have a dream laundry in mind if I ever build. It will have bench space for folding, and hanging space for drip-dry. It will have plenty of room to move, and no doors that open over each other.
And I want a clothesline just like the one I have now.
I love hanging washing outside. I leave the kids inside, and just take 10 minutes to breath while I'm pegging. I love the grass, the blue skies, and adore the smell of clean, sundried sheets. Unfortunately with our state being known for the unpredictable weather, more often than not my washing is hung from a makeshift line under the patio by the front door to prevent it getting rained on or blown 3 blocks away.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you should move back HERE! :)
DeleteYou know, nobody hangs washing out here. No one has clothes lines. That's one thing I miss about living in Australia -- hanging the wash. It's an odd sort of pleasure, but I understand it.
ReplyDeleteWow! I can't imagine not having a clothesline. Mind you, in 6 feet of snow or a place where there are tornadoes, I kind of understand...
DeleteI have one of those older clotheslines with the wires, but it's in pretty good shape, no loose wires and not too much dirt. It's a communal line, (like all the flats around here) there are two of them out the back, several other flats have the pull down square lines instead. I wash down the wires before hanging my washing out and now and again I spray Baygon onto the corners of the cross pieces where the spiders used to spin their webs to keep them away. Sun-dried sheets and clothes smell so much nicer and it is certainly cheaper than running a drier all the time.
ReplyDeleteOh, I can't imagine having a communal line!
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