Saving a Few Cents

So, at our old house we had a fabulous clothes line courtesy of our favorite neighbor, Ross (he found the T poles for us at a garage sale) and Michael (he set the poles in the ground and strung the line). I loved that clothes line and really enjoyed hanging diapers and laundry out every weekend. We had a routine on Saturdays and Sundays of waking up and starting a load of wash so that we could hang the clothes to dry for the day. It was such a peaceful routine standing there in the bright morning sunshine methodically hanging each piece on the line, and then of course, we'd periodically check on those clothes to test the dryness of each piece. On a good day it would take just a short hour to dry, on a slightly chilly, cloudy day the clothes could hang out there for 4-5 hours before drying. But, we didn't care about the length, it was our intention to line dry our clothes rather than use the dryer. We used the dryer sparingly knowing that our clothes and Ava's diapers would last longer and that we were saving by not using electricity.

Flash forward to our new house. No clothes line. We've been in the new house 3 weeks now and finally found a clothes line solution. Attempting to avoid permanently setting poles in the ground, we still wanted to be able to use a line for drying. So, we found a retractable solution online, we ordered it and the thing arrived days ago. Our Sunday was spent trying to get the line installed on the side of the house and then a pole at the opposite end of the yard for said line to attach to. Michael was the real handyman in this case and put up a pole with materials we already had at the house. With that done, it was time to install the line to the house. The only trip we had to make was to Lowe's for screws. Said screws in hand, we installed the line to the side of the house. We put up the line, tested it, but it was already 5:30 pm so we have yet to hang clothes on the line, but I can't wait to try it out.

Hopefully our neighbors don't go postal about seeing our clothes flapping in the wind. Check out this story, where the neighbors aren't nearly as nice!


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