May
31
At long last… we have a clothesline!
After a few years of asking to get a clothesline, and mostly not having the money to buy one or the time to put it up properly… we finally put one up last night. And I was very excited to rush out and try it today (before the thunderstorms roll in).
So now that I am no longer a slave to my dryer, I need to learn how to make drying clothes on a line work better for us. It has been almost 20 years since I have used a clothesline with any regularity — the last time I had a clothesline I lived in Japan, and there really wasn’t any choice in how things got done. No dryer, no fabric softener (or at least, none that I could read Japanese well enough to use). and my clothes usually ended up discoloured from the intensity of the sun and the pollution.
Needless to say, things are quite different now.
So, what I ask of you is this: What advice or tips or recommendations can you give to a novice with a clothesline?
I bought some laundry soap with fabric softener in it to use today. I didn’t go cheap — I bought Tide, with Springtime Fresh Downy fabric softener added in. But I must be honest, what I found was this: my clothes are neither soft nor springtime fresh, as the label indicates they will be. They are, in fact, crunchy and rough. Now, they’re mostly towels which, I know, most people put in the dryer anyway. But I thought, surely people put towels on the line too, don’t they?
Another problem: after handling the clothes to bring them in, I also notice my hands now stink of some sort of rubbery scent. Well, rubber mixed with farts, actually. Not a pleasant smell. So what is up with that, Tide with Downy in it? Does springtime freshness actually smell like RUBBERY FARTS? Because I tell you this, I remember springtime smelling a lot better than this.
So you see, I need help. Please, friends, help a clothesline newbie out. Otherwise, there will be a family walking around smelling raunchy and vaguely rubberized, and nobody wants that.
