Solar Clothes Drying

Homemade clothespin holder

Multi-purpose clothesline - hummer feeders also!

Hang clothes inside out for faster drying and less fading.

I don't know about you, but I grew up hanging clothes outdoors (or indoors in the basement on rainy days) to dry.  My grandmothers also did it.  Nowadays it seems few city folk do that.  It's a shame wasting all that free solar energy.  Plus there is nothing quite so sweet-smelling as solar dried bed sheets to sink into after a long day.  I've seen all sorts of wonderful birds flying overhead while hanging clothes.  Our forebears were environmentalists without realizing it.  Now we live in a culture of what I call pseudo-environmentalism or selective environmentalism:  Prius-driving folks who live in subdivisions with covenants prohibiting something as unsightly as an outdoor clothesline.  One has to be practical with one's environmentalism.  Thankfully I married a man with my same priorities in that department who has taught me numerous new tricks regarding solar drying.  Several of those tricks are depicted in the photos above.  Others are below:

• Check the weather beforehand.  Hang on a day with 20% or less rain chance.  Check the hourly forecast since the daily forecast usually has a higher chance of rain.  Check the radar.
• You can hang in the winter.
• Windy sunny days with less humidity dry clothes faster.  Duh.
• Turn clothes wrong side out.  Jeans dry faster (thanks, hubby) and colors don't fade.
• If you are low on clothespins, double up or share from one item to the next.
• Wipe the clothesline off with a wet paper towel chased by a clean one before hanging, especially whites.
• If you leave clothes outdoors on the line in the rain all day, the wooden clothespins turn dark.  Don't use them later on white or light-colored clothes because they will stain the clothes dark.
• You can make a clothespin holder for free using a gallon plastic milk jug... after you finish drinking the milk. You cut a hole in the side and put a repurposed clothes hanger wire through the top and presto, you have a practical albeit unattractive but free clothespin holder.  You may have to rebend the wire a bit to keep it from blowing off the line on windy days.  Again, thanks, hubby!
• You can dry clothes AND increase indoor non-basement humidity by putting your clothes on drying racks in front of upstairs heat vents in the winter.  Once again, thanks, hubby!
• Clotheslines can be used for other purposes, such as hanging plants, hummingbird feeders (both plastic and fuschia hanging baskets), or winter bird feeders.
• Regarding the latter above, squirrels are not able (at least in my experience) to access bird feeders hung from clotheslines if the feeders are propped by clothesline poles and held in place by clothespins.  However, if the clothesline is too close to a tree branch, squirrels will sit on the branch and neatly nip the clothesline in two in order to access the feeders.  So, that is why our white dogwood tree no longer hangs over the clothesline and is thus lopsided.
• Make sure your neighbor is not burning trash or yard waste before you hang clothes.
• Pokeweed in bird poop washes out of clothes.

Happy hanging!

P.S.  Yes, I DO use the clothes dryer for some items like nice soft bath towels, much to hubby's chagrin.  For one thing, it's a much faster cleanup when you accidentally leave a kleenix in a jeans pocket.  It was a definite patience-building exercise discovering a washed kleenix in hundreds of pieces in hubby's clothes.  He doesn't want his clothes put in the dryer, so I did a lot of hand picking that morning.  But a good memory test for next time.  And my policy is - if I find loose change in his pockets, sometimes it becomes mine....if it's a penny or dime, but not if it's the whole pocketful.