It's been about a month since I started using my clothesline regularly, and I've figured out a few things that have made it easier to continue using.
- Dry clothes for about 5 minutes to remove wrinkles before hanging on the line. I was a little frustrated in the beginning by how wrinkled the clothes were (it has been breezy at best, but never windy on clothesline days so far),
but I learned that if I dry them in the dryer for just a few minutes the clothes are not wrinkled.
- Hang clothes from the top or bottom, not the middle of the garment (as I did in the top picture... sorry it's so fuzzy!). This probably is obvious to some, but it wasn't to me -- I started out hanging clothes so that they were folded in half over the line. I know now that if I hang just a portion of the garment over the line (clipped with clothespins) and have the majority of it hanging down one side (as I did in the bottom picture) the clothes dry much
faster.
- Socks take forever to dry outside. Hang them on the inside rack instead. Ditto for towels.
- If you don't have a huge line and have to hang some things inside, hang the clothes inside that will take longer to dry and the ones that will dry faster outside. That way you're pretty much guaranteed that the clothes outside will dry by the end of the day, and it's not a problem if the inside clothes take longer to dry.
- Dry everything for about 5 minutes in the dryer after they've dried outside to remove stiffness. Our clothes smell great when they come off the line, but because there's hardly any wind, they're stiff. I put them in the dryer again for just a few minutes, and they're pretty much as soft as I'd expect them to be if I dried them start to finish in the dryer.
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