blowing in the wind

my household recently invested in used washer and dryer, a well worth it splurge despite the fact that the laundromat is quite literally half a block from our house. i hooked up the washer pretty immediately, but the dryer is still free wheeling, partially because i'm scared of making gas connections and partially because i hung a new and super fantastic clothesline in the garden. i mean, when you got a breeze, who needs a dryer?

i thought i'd give a how to but really it was so simple, i almost feel silly doing it. i made mine out of two 2x4's, 8 screw eyes and 30 or 40 some odd feet of rope. fortunately we have a fence and a hot tub shack that i screwed the 2x4's into after i had attached the screw eyes (about a foot apart) and then threaded the rope through and pulled it tight as i could. our fence is inclined to do the lean back after some lovely and charming police officers lumbered over it one time to get to our neighbors house, so this made the clothesline pull itself pretty tight. you can also use clothesline pulleys if you intend to stand in the same place to put your clothes on the line (like out the window or something), but i put ours over a concrete slab so it wasn't really necessary.



being as i google everything, i stumbled on this great clothesline activist group called project laundry list that puts together an annual event called national hanging out day. their website has a lot of good info and statistics about dryer energy and clothesline politics. it hadn't occurred to me that a lot of communities ban clotheslines because they think they're ugly. sure, call me a hippie, but i actually find ours quite beautiful.