Making Dreams Come True

Clotheslines are very important to me. I've been hanging clothes outside to dry almost exclusively for years now. I like it, and I like not paying for the propane or electricity for a clothes dryer.

And now, settle in for a short history of my life with clotheslines. Whee! With many links to pictures of Clothesline I Have Known, because I appear to have a slight fixation.

Ahem.

The first clothesline I remember using was when I was growing up in Tucson. We had one on our back patio and my dad was pretty militant about us using it instead of the dryer. It takes clothes about two minutes to dry there, so I can see why he was so insistent about it. I found it kind of annoying at the time--teenagers are like that--but it started my clothesline experience.

The clothesline at Blackrock was always between two trees, as there are many, many trees to choose from there. First it was between the sweet gum tree and a cedar tree. (Bonus photo of that clothesline, because yikes, I have a LOT of photos of clotheslines on this blog.) Until the cedar tree almost fell right over from rot and had to be removed.

Then the clothesline was moved to a spot between a basswood tree, a utility pole, and a tulip poplar tree. Until the tulip poplar blew over in a violent storm. Then we just had the shorter clothesline between the basswood and the utility pole.

At our house in northern New York, there was no clothesline until A. put one up for me under the elevated porch. We eventually moved it to a spot between a birch tree and a spruce tree, so the clothes would get more sun and also not be right outside the back door. It was a pretty short line, though, so it wasn't good for much except hanging out blankets or whatever.

I never did get a clothesline put up at our rental house in the village here, mostly because there was nowhere convenient to run it and we didn't want to dig a giant hole in the yard to put in a standalone one.

When we moved to this house, A. put up a temporary clothesline for me between the fence and the shed. I never intended that to be the permanent spot because it wasn't long enough and also it was exposed to the often-strong winds here that would blow things right off the line with some regularity. The wind also blew loose dirt all around there.

I was determined that at this house, where we anticipate staying for many years and where the weather is good pretty much all year for line drying, I was going to have a clothesline that really worked the way I wanted it to, not just a random one put up wherever there happened to be supports for it. After all my experience with clotheslines in the past, I knew exactly what I wanted.

The preferred style of clothesline in this area is two T-bars of heavy pipe to make a double clothesline. I liked this idea very much and told A. that's what I wanted. With two full-length clotheslines, I would finally have enough space to hang two loads of laundry. I have never had this much clothesline space, and now that I have to do two loads of laundry every other day, I could only hang all my clothes out if I did a load every single day. And then I still couldn't put up sheets and other things.

I also spent some time thinking about where I wanted the clothesline positioned, eventually deciding on the backyard, which is completely enclosed by the house on the south side and a high board fence on the other three sides. This blocks the wind enough that even when it's blowing a gale everywhere else, there's never more than a pretty good breeze back there. Also, there are no trees there, which means no birds perching over the line and soiling the formerly-clean clothes with their droppings.

Gross.

A. built the clothesline I specified, in the place I requested. I bought some heavy-duty clothesline to put on the frame, some really awesome metal clothespins to anchor the clothes on the line even if the wind is strong (and also to replace most of the wooden clothespins I have always hated because they seem to break far too frequently).

We think it could use an additional prop in the center to hold everything up properly, but other than that easily-remedied issue, I have the clothesline of my dreams now:

Happy sigh.

And as a bonus, A. also made me a compost bin so I wasn't just dumping garbage in a pile in the corner of the back yard:

Incredibly ugly and cheap afghan left behind by Dale. Nothing is more patriotic than a compost bin.

Three cheers for A. He sure knows how to spoil a woman.