Clothesline Etiquette

Clothesline etiquette. What you didn’t know it existed? Apparently it does and a quick Google search turned up hundreds of thousands of articles on the subject including this one and this one but I’ll just share my thoughts with you all anyway.

To start the season off right you should run a damp cloth along the full length of your line to get off all the dirt, including bird poop. Why you ask? Because this only takes about 2 minutes but is well worth the effort. You don’t want your nice clean laundry to have lines of dirt on it, do you?

Make sure your clothesline is tight and you have spacers to add along the way. As your line gets heavy it will sag and these will give it a lift. I have three of the kind with rollers top and bottom and I use them every time because my line is quite long.



I have to say that I love my clothes line. It has a boat winch system that lowers the front pulley to make loading the line easier and then raises it back up again to get the clothes up off the ground. Hubby is a genius! Oh wait, that may have been my idea. What a team we make!!!







Now that I have given you this bit of information it’s time to hang out the laundry. Whites should be washed first and hung out before darks because the laws of science have whites taking longer to dry. Darks or colours next, it really doesn’t matter which.

Take notice of which way the wind is blowing. Hang your button-down shirts, un-buttoned, with the fronts facing the direction from which the wind is blowing. This will encourage the wind to puff out the shirts. This means no ironing. The Witch hasn’t ironed in years. Hang all your shirts out by their tails in case you get any stretching. Nothing looks dumber than pointy shoulders.

I hang all our laundry out, even underwear. We have no neighbors to speak of but even at the old house I would still hang it all out. Really, we all wear it (usually) so why be embarrassed? And mine is so cute (too much information) according to Hubby.

I hang all our towels out also and then if they feel scratchy I just pop them in the dryer for 5 min to fluff them up. The wind here has usually taken care of that problem.



These are just some of my tips and I hope they help everyone take one more step in saving the environment. Look closely at your next electric bill to see how much you have saved, too.

By the way, I don’t usually recommend a product but I have been using a great fabric softener and I think it is worth mentioning Ultra Gain Original Fresh.

Plastic bags.

Years ago my sister would always take her own bags with her, canvas bags or otherwise, when she went shopping. The store clerks, especially the younger ones, would always try to give her new bags. They didn’t seem to understand the concept of what she was asking them to do. I guess it seemed pretty strange at the time.

Now “bring your own” has become a big deal but, for some stores, it seems more of a way to screw the consumer out of a few more pennies than as a way to save the environment. I have been using bins for years and I find them very handy. I remember at first the stores gave me points for having these bins then they fazed it out (shame on you). Now it's the in thing and the big stores say that the money they get from people buying their plastic bags will be put back into the environment. Really!? I'll be waiting to see if they publish the numbers on this one. I, as a consumer, still use my bins, and the cashiers seem to really like them better than the bags. When I see people still paying for these bags I have this picture in my head and it is not pretty, but it really hits home.