Do you hang your clothes out on the line to dry?
French Laundry
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39 responses to “French Laundry”
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Love your knickers! 😉
I used to dry laundry on the line back in DC (not while we lived still in an apartment on Virginia Avenue where it was verboten – much to my chagrin, with me coming from Rome where I actually hung the laundry on lines from my apartment windows, not the unmentionables, though). Here, I make to with a foldable clothes dryer, except for towels and the like, they go into the dryer). -
My “Hills Hoist” is my favourite household appliance. I once had a landscaper draw up plans for a lovely back-yard garden and the first thing he did was to remove the clothesline from the plan! We had a very heated clash about why it had to stay.
He said “But when you look at the garden I create I want you to see harmony, recreation and relaxation. Not be reminded of work.”
And I replied “Only a mother or a housewife can appreciate just how relaxing and peaceful it is to watch clean washing catching in the breeze on a warm sunny day. As long as it is hanging on the line, it means the washing is finished. As soon as I bring it in it means the ironing needs to be done.”
Also, my American girlfriend has noticed that it is a point of national pride with Aussie women to own a dryer but never use it.
PS I actually raised 3 boys without owning a dryer!
PPS I also match the color of the pegs to the color of the clothes – don’t tell anyone, please. I might look a bit crazy. -
Maybe because you are posting with your phone lately, but for the past couple weeks your posts have a title without text some times pictures..but today only the title shows. Is anyone else experiencing this?
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Not my laundry, although it would dry in 5 seconds in this dry heat. I do hang to dry my coffee stained ribbons and lace on our deck.
In the spring and fall I might hang a blouse to dry outside but it’s too dusty in the summer to do that. -
I hang my clothes out when it’s sunny (which is about two weeks out of the year in England) and when I have time. However, many British people hang their clothes out quite often and much to my surprise, not everyone has a tumble dryer. In fact, once on an American ex-pat forum there was a huge argument about tumble dryers vs. hanging clothes out on a line. Really!
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I do not but I hang them inside. I have a fold out rack on the wall in my laundry room. While it’s so hot here in Arizona in the summer, the clothes would dry in minutes, it’s too hot for me to stand out there to hang them 🙂
Love these images of the drying frills -
I love to dry laundry on the line on warm/hot days here in So. Calif. Had hubby create a special one for me in the back that neighbors can’t see. Nothing compares to the smell of sunshine on fresh clothes :-0
And I love to hang out my quilts to dry ~ old ones and vintage ones! Now about the pics…don’t think I would hang up laundry in my slip but do love the lace and linens Madame is hanging out to dry! -
When I was a young bride I hung the laundry…..but now I have it even better, my husband does the laundry! He even came home with lavendar scented dryer sheets, such a darling man.
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I don’t, but I love the way it smells, I use a dryer. Linda’s pic reminds me of someone traveling on The Oregon Trail.
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Maybe you best post ever.
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In the interest of saving money on the electric bill..I purchased a wooden folding dryer rack. I have a covered screen porch on the back just perfect for hanging all your unmentionables and the rest! Love the way they smell after being outside all day.
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We don’t have a tumble dryer and my Brit husband has never used one. I miss having one around sometimes, but I have found one key benefit that may be overlooked when considering the benefits of line drying. I hope it’s okay to include the link.
http://giftsofthejourney.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/one-benefit-of-line-drying-no-more-lost-socks/ -
Sheets hang outdoors all year. Sometimes a challenge in winter, but I watch for the best day and out they go. Love your photos and Linda’s laundry is alot more beautiful than the normal laundry I hang out. I do go out in my robe to hang things, but not in a slip. You never know who might walk or drive by. Love, love photographing laundry hanging when we travel, but don’t see it at home very often.
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Yes, I do. It smells so much better that way and I even like the crunchy towels to dry with after my shower.
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Hihi… I hate to disagree with the sock eating dryer… that is what I love to use the dryer for… cuz i dislike hanging socks with a passion. To much to fiddle with.
But mostly anything else get’s hung up on the line when weather permits. During the winter the basement thankfully has ample space to.
As my husband likes to point out and my sister would quickly agree… I can shrink the shnozzles out of a simple cotton shirt. So if I want to be able to squeeze my derriere into my pants they need the line and gentle breeze treatment :o) -
Here in England I hang my washing out all summer, just waiting for a few fine days before I do the washing.
I now have a rotary clothes drier in the garden, but miss my long clothes line.
Note to Karen C..I used to start with one colour of washing on one end of the line and hang it up in graduated colours….now that is mad, but it looked pretty to me!!
As usual Corey you have bought romance to the everyday…thank you! -
We hang out the towels and sheets and blankets on a line tied to two trees. But, recently one of the trees developed leprosy and the huge limb with the line came crashing down one night. Now I need to find another spot for the line. Another thing for my to do list.
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I concur.
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Hanging out laundry is one of summer’s joys. I love my clothesline.
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Bien sûr!
(I’ve tagged you in a meme as I would love to see some of your favorite posts over the years.
http://chezlouloufrance.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-7-links.html
Hope you join in.) -
true, have to go and collect the laundry outside!
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When neighbors purchased a new electric dryer >30 years ago, when they found out we didn’t have a dryer they gave us their still-usable old gas one, which Farmboy Husband has never gotten around to connecting to our gas line (I stopped fighting THAT battle decades ago!).
So, all of our laundry dries either a) on outdoors clotheslines (when weather permits), or b) on clotheslines in the basement, or c) drip-drying from hangers (which has the added benefit of reducing the amount of ironing needed).
It’d be interesting to find a formula with which to calculate — factoring in compound interest and inflation, of course! — how much we’ve saved on utilities, dryers, and wear-and-tear on clothing over the decades.
Perhaps enough to have paid for our trip to France this Spring?!?!? -
Hi Christine,
Yes, lately my post have been a bit strange. Some have “titles”, some don’t. Some have “text”, others don’t. Some have only photos, and some have bits and pieces of everything yet missing somthing.
I am learning how to blog with my i-Phone, and haven’t mastered it yet.
Hopefully once mastered I can post a few times a day.
C -
I’ve lobbied my husband to install a clothesline but (a) he balks at the idea as too much work and no place to put it, (b) not a lot of good drying-weather months here in Pacific NW, and (d) he does ALL the laundry and happily hangs cottons on our 3 wooden drying racks. So who am I to push for a different arrangement?
I remember:
– How wonderful childhood sheets dried outside smelled.
– Rushing out to gather in clothes before big rainstorms arrived.
– Being really happy when Mom and Dad got a dryer because the towels felt so much fluffier; I’m not a fan of their scratchiness!
– Hanging out loads of laundry, damply flapping in my face from Oklahoma winds.
Fun post, and fun question. thanks! -
Thanks.
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My washing today is much less glamourous than Linda’s – sheets & towels & it will be hung outside even though it’s mid-winter. Isn’t sliding into bed with fresh sheets one of those simple pleasures of life???? Growing up in a rural area as one of 6 children, Mum had both a rotary clothesline plus a loooong wire strung between poles for the sheets.
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Not at all Georgie, it makes perfect sense to me. Here’s another confession. I have to hang whites and blacks separately. Oh, dear. Too much said.
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When I lived at home with my parents, we almost always hung our clothes. When I graduated from college, I lived in the country and hung my clothes on the line. (even though the neighbor’s dogs ate them right off of the line!) Nothing compares to sleeping on sheets that have been dried in the sun. Now I go to work and have a dryer. 🙁
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ME TOO!!-i thought i was the only one
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I admire all you clothesline users. As soon as I started reading the comments, the smell of fresh sheets, from my mother’s clothesline in Berkeley, came back to me.
I have to admit I only hang my hand washable dresses and my husband’s Hawaiian shirts outside to dry, and they sure dry quickly during our hot Sacramento summers. -
Growing up in Scotland we always hung clothes out on the line to dry, it was considered terribly expensive to use the dryer. Often in winter you’d go out to bring them in and they were frozen solid. You would pull jeans off the line and they would stick straight out, plank like, horizontally!
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What glamorous laundry you have! Mine always go out on our flat, Arabic-style roofs here in Malta. Apart from when a) a Saharan dust storm is in full blast; b) when we get such sultry, humid weather they never dry; and c)when the sun is so strong my coloureds would fade in an instance. Right now, my clothes dry outside over night – far too hot to bear the roof! They still come in stiff as boards! Your post reminds me, I need to wash my old French linen purchases from my July trip to Provence – all that stiffening agent and yellowing takes a while to bleach out – ahh, the Maltese sun – perfect for whites though!
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If envy wasn’t a sin, I would envy all you outdoor laundry hangers. I have wonderful memories of handing my mom clothes pins when she hung laundry. And that smell! Oh, the smell of sun-dried and wind-blown laundry. I think I slept better back then.
We are not allowed to hang our laundry outside. It’s against the home-owner’s iron clad rules. No one minds smelling those stinky softeners polluting the air when the vents suck out the smells and assault sensitive noses. No wonder so many Americans suffer from allergies. There’s one brand from south of the border that smells like bug spray. Mercy!
Wish our subdivision would sue the homeowners’ association for the right to use fresh air and sunshine. You know I live in Texas, right? It’s where all the politicians are certified fools. Except for Ann Richards. 😉 May she rest in peace.
Lovely laundry, Tara. 🙂 -
Always on the line and we’re lucky enough to have enough sun even in winter to get things dry in a day. Rain is forecast for tomorrow and through the weekend so I’m emptying my laundry basket today, so that it is prepared to take the huge amount of laundry that builds up when I can’t wash for several days. The kids get dragged out to help hang it up and then fold it up when dry… hopefully they will end up with happy memories of laundry too, like so many of the comments!
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Nothing better than clothes wind and sun dried on a clothes line!
The smell, the feel and, as so many of your readers mentioned, the “Memories”. -
NEVER
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Here in Willows it is crazy to use a dryer…clothes dry faster in the sun. There are so many good reasons to hang clothes outside to dry, save money, natural resources, aesthetically pleasing, meditative, great smell, whiter whites, and the crunchy towels means you don’t need to buy exfoliants. I think fabric softeners make towels less absorbent. Ok Joan, get off the bandwagon.
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We didn’t own a clothes dryer until recently, and it’s only a hand-me-down for use if we get extended periods of rain or need a quick dry, which is rare. We get 300 days of sunshine per year here in So Texas,would be crazy to use a dryer. Well, there are also those few weeks when we get sap from the trees, and the occasional smoke storm when fields are burning in Mexico. But yeah, we hang our laundry (cloth diapers too).
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It would be nice anywhere but in the rainy, misty, foggy, humid, buggy South!
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