Clothesline Rules!

[polkanut]

The Basic Rules for Clotheslines:

1. You had to wash the clothesline before hanging any clothes-walk the entire length with a damp cloth around the lines.

2. You had to hang the clothes in a certain order, and always hang "whites" with "whites", and hang them first.

3. You never hung a shirt by the shoulders-always by the tail! What would the neighbors think?

4. Wash day on a Monday!...Never hang clothes on the weekend, or Sunday, for Heaven's sake!

5. Hang the sheets and towels on the outside lines so you could hide your "unmentionables" in the middle (perverts & busybodies, y'know!).

6. It didn't matter if it was sub zero weather...Clothes would "freeze-dry."

7. Always gather the clothespins when taking down dry clothes! Pins left on the line were "tacky!"

8. If you were efficient, you would line the clothes up so that each item didn't need 2 clothespins, but shared one of the clothespins with the next washed item.

9. Clothes off the line by dinner time, neatly folded in the clothes basket, and ready to be ironed.

10. IRONED?! Well, that's a whole other subject!

 

[iheartmaytag]

I have to break rule #4

I ususally do my big washing on Saturday.

I usually fold my items as I take them off the line, then I only have to handle them again to put them away. Sheets are very easy to fold on the line, I just use the pins to tack up the ends as I fold them, then release and finish the fold.

Place bird feeders at far end of the yard away from clothesline, so the little buggers will be attracted away from your clean laundry. Nothing I hate more than going to pull in my sheets and find bird plop on them.

 

[vintagesearch]

i only break rule number 4 and 5 anyone who enjoys looking at my underwear so be it LOL and no monday is a drudgery! no specific days to do laundry usually by the end of a week somewhere in one month i'll do it. yes im lazy and do laundry once a month i still have an abundance of clothes even if the hamper (s) are exploding

my parents break every rule in the clothesline and laundry book the OCD group (include me in) would die if they knew or saw what my parents do with clothes LOL (well washing and drying them)

 

[rayjay]

WOW

Hi Tim. My aunt followed the same rules as my parents did also growing up until we got a dryer in 1965. Then we unsed the dryer only in the winter or if it was raining and we needed something, otherwise, we waited for a nice day. But...the sheets were always hung out to dry. Then as time went on, the dryer got used more and more. But...the sheets, blankets and other special items were hung out even in the freezing winter. There is something so nice about laundry that freezes and brought in to finish drying. I guess it is the winter air.

I live in a neighborhood that has clotheline poles and pulley clotheslines. Every Saturday my backyard neighbor hangs out all her underwear. We call it the parade of the panites. lol

I was telling a friend of ours about this. Our friend quoted "I would never hang my underwear out on the line for everyone to see" I said whats the difference, "Everyone knows you have a big a**. lol lol

 

[rayjay]

BTW, TIm are you Polish? lol

 

[yogitunes]

CLUTCH THE PEARLS!!!

my mother followed these to the letter....

never hang clothes on sunday...heaven forbid...what would the church people say?

and never wash at night...

and sheets were hung longwise with the center fold at the bottom to make a crease so when you made the bed you could "center" the sheet evenly on the bed...

and then perm press was brought in and "sprinkled" and rolled and then into the freezer to be ironed the next day....i never understood why not use the garden hose and save time...

oh the rules and nighmares of doing laundry when it could have been so much fun!

if I had my way i would have trained the birds to sit on the line and hold my clothes and then fly them to me as I sat by the pool drinking margaritas....lol....well, it worked on the cartoons....dream on

 

[laundromat]

"tops from their bottoms and bottoms from their tops" this is what my grandmother taught us.

 

[whirlcool]

The weather here has been nice enough where we only ran the dryer for one load (denims) this week. Everything else was hung outside to dry. Has anyone ever noticed how fast you can fall asleep while laying on freshly washed line dried sheets? It's almost like aroma therapy!

Since the economy has pretty much crashed, I have noticed more and more clotheslines going up in the neighborhood.

As for cleaning the clothes line before hand, I use a wet paper towel. Just look at the dirt that was on the clothesline!

Our neighbors leave their clothespins on the line all the time.

Rather than install poles in the ground, our clothesline runs from the house, around a large oak tree and back to the house again. This area gets full sun most of the day.

 

[dj-gabriele]

I line dry my shirts ant T-shirts from under the armpits after I have put them inside out so the clothes pins mark don't show up and also the undewear gets a pin under the crotch, inside out so the pin mark won't show too.
In winter I hang my stuff before going to bed in the hall and get them at morning as they will have dried overnight.

 

[toggleswitch2]

"tops from their bottoms and bottoms from their tops"
Now that is an interesting visual.

Yes in momma Toggle's house it was "Never on a Sunday", Holiday or Holy Week.

 

[maytagbear]

I don't have backyard access,

and there is no way on earth that I would hang laundry in a front yard...all that traffic soot, for one thing.

I do like line drying in theory, however. Except for bath towels, which need either airfluff or a few ending minutes of heat. Line dried bath towels are just unpleasant to me.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[toggleswitch2]

If a person is in their underwear and a "friend" notices a pin mark...get dressed... they are missing the point.

 

[polkanut]

Ray,

I'm 75% Pommeranian, and 25% Bavarian. Pommerania was what is now the Baltic region of Northern Poland. Why do you ask?

 

[toggleswitch2]

Just one Pole making contact with another.

 

[rayjay]

Now Steve.... You bet me to it. lol

Tim.....Just thought you were Polish because of your screen name. DUH lol lol

I say this, because the Poles (and I am not singling us out) do a lot of OCD stuff like this. lol

Well. both my parents were born here, but my grandparents on my dads side were from back then what was called Prussia. Came to America in 1903.

 

[polkanut]

Both my Dad's and Mom's ancestors came here in the mid-1850's. Ironically, they all sailed from Hamburg, Germany.

 

[rayjay]

I still like to keep up a lot of the Polish tradtions especially around the holidays.

 

[abcomatic]

Just brought the clothes in from off of the line

A beautiful day in Illinois(for once) to hang clothes out.
Fill the ABC wringer with water and detergent; clean the line first, sheets and pillow cases, then my underwear and white towels that I had for the first load out on the line. A windy day so everything dried quickly.Take the clothes down and bring in the clothespins.
Everything smells great! Gary

 

[launderess]

Whites hung with whites (in the sun), colors hung with color (in the shade). This prevents coloured laundry from being bleached by sunlight. OTHO one often wishes white laundry to have that sort of treatment.

Monday was nor is the universal wash day. For one thing in the era before automatic washing machines, it would involve gathering and starting laundry on a Sunday,which in may religous laws was a day of rest.

As automatic washing machines became more common, but line drying outdoors prevailed, many housewives did their laundry based upon weather reports, or merely when they awoke saw the day and decided it would be "a good day for laundry". What one wanted was clear weather, lots of sunshine and hopefully a good brisk wind. Nothing too strong, but enough of a breeze that would dry,air and even help remove wrinkles from laundry.

If there is a blueberry, or for that matter any other sort of fruit, grains and or anything else that would attract birds, best locate one's clothesline well away from it, or take steps to prevent "fly-overs".

If one's laundry is not totally clean, white, brite and free of stains, DO NOT hang it on the lines until it is so. Airing one's dirty linen in public is not only poor taste, it shows a lack of good housekeeping skills.

L.

 

[ronhic]

Apart from Sunday, I follow the rules....

Hang shirts by the shoulders?? Sheesh...

 

[butch-innj]

I have a dryer but still hang most of my clothes outside on the
lines. For me, nothing smells better than sheets that have
been hung outside to dry.
One thing I read about somewhere years ago is that when you
hang clothes outside to dry, after you get them all hung up,
take the garden hose and soak them till the water is dripping
off of them. For some reason this helps to soften them with
out the use of fabric softener (which I'm allergic to) and
it makes them dry faster.
Of course, you can't do this in the winter.
Shirts & T-shirts get hung upside down so you don't get those
shoulder nipples.

 

[launderess]

Hanging Shirts

Actually there are two schools of thought:

Some say by the shoulders only, others via the shirt tails (clothes pins at the two side seams).

Several of my vintage laundry and housekeeping manuals favour the later, though give the former as well.

The idea behind hanging shirts via their tails is because it is easier to smooth them out, thus the wind will help remove many wrinkles. Also with the double fabric parts (cuffs, collars, and yoke), hanging in the breeze, they will dry faster.

Personally find hanging shirts by their tails a better option for reasons listed above, and because any marks from the clothesline will be towards the bottom of the shirt, not across the yoke. Depending on if the shirt is to be ironed or not, and how much work one wishes to make of that project, it can make a difference. For instance many modern steam irons do not put out enough moisture to properly deal with clothesline marks and or laundry "creases". So unless one is going to sprinkle or otherwise dampen one's ironing, the results may not be as good.

L.

 

[frigilux]

Love the list of rules!

I learned the hard way that you have to run a damp rag over the clotheslines before hanging your first load. It's amazing how grimy they can get. If I do laundry two consecutive days, I don't clean them the second day unless there's been a lot of dust blowing around.

I always do my laundry on Saturday and/or Sunday. I have a partially fenced-in back yard, so I hang my briefs. I do, however, follow Launderess's advice and hang towels on the line in front of the one I use for my undergarments. It gives them a little privacy, LOL.

I'm keeping track of how many loads I dry on the line this summer. My first load went up at the end of April. My dryer has been spared 21 loads, already this season! I love the way bed sheets smell when they come off the line.

I also have a set of summer bath linens. They come off the line very soft and fluffy. My winter towel set comes off the line very stiff and rough. They go to the back of the linen closet for the line-drying season.

 

[toggleswitch2]

...and at a savings of 2.5 kwh per average load, one can easily calculate the savings...........

 

[autowasherfreak]

I would love to have a clothesline again. But I live next door to a concrete company, and with all the heavy cement trucks driving in and out all the time, the clothes would be dirty before they were dried.

But I when I lived with my mom, we hung clothes out all the time during the summer. I loved the smell clothes that were line dried. I hung shirts by the tails, and always overlapped items to save on clothes pins. Those were great times.

 

[mielabor]

I think I break almost every rule.

I always hang shirts by the collar!

 

[animasinsulinpu]

Clotheslines

I should do that. This is no joke. My Levis will dry in 10 minutes in Az summers, like 118 degrees. I'm gonna do that for 1 month and compair electric bills.....Bill in Az....

 

[rpm]

Jeans dried on a clothesline? You will have to have a hammer to fold them.

 

[animasinsulinpu]

Jeans

You are right! They are like roof shingles!!!!!

 

[joeinfl]

While growing up, everything went on the line to dry. As a few have stated there is nothing like the smell of line dried sheets on the bed especially in the summer when it was hot. I remember taking a shower before bed and climbing into the clean sheets, I swear they kept you cooler. We got a dryer at some point but it was only used when it was too cold or raining outside to hang things out. When I got older and did my own laundry I always used the dryer and have since then. I went into the Air Force and by the time I got out and was back home for college, my parents had moved and there were no clothes lines allowed at the new house. I went from apartments and townhouses that didn't allow them or didn't have a space for them to my own house in Florida and the HOA does not allow clothes lines. I think about that sometimes now wondering how much lower my electric bill would be if I had a clothes line, but then I remember all the crap in the air and the "love bugs" and am glad I have the dryer! (sorry this got to be so long winded, I tend to ramble, comes from living alone!)