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Saturday, January 31, 2009

air drying





Here's some of my summer laundry, drying in Vermont. Our place is near the top of the ridge and the wind/breeze is amazing!  Things dry in minutes!  When the weather's wet, we resort to setting up our enormous drying rack our family dubbed "the Paul Bunyan" that we ordered from Lehmans.
Lehmans is a "non-electric catalog", and their storefront is in Ohio's Amish country (I need to stop there sometime...).  The Paul Bunyan rack is also a great place to hang wet snowpants, scarves and jackets that accumulate after tobogganing and snowshoeing.  The benefits of air drying are many.  Did you know that an electric dryer uses 10 times the electricity of a washing machine?  Laundry dried on a clothesline has a scent that no drier sheet can match.  In the winter, our laundry, hung on racks and banisters in our house, helps humidify the air, too.  

I made these fun clothespin bags from directions in The Impatient Patchworker . I gave them as Christmas gifts to some of my friends who are line drying devotees. 

I've heard that some towns have ordinances against clotheslines.  "Unsightly". Ha!  As the green revolution gains momentum folks will realize that clotheslines are "yard art"!

3 comments:

  1. congratulations this is a nice blog, will follow from barcelona spain, i love it.

    thanks,regards.

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  2. Ah summer sun and breezes! Yes, you're right, there are towns with ordinances against clotheslines...love the argument that they're yard art *g*. Your clothespin bags are very pretty. I *love* the smell of sun-warmed laundry. I've got a problem with leaving things out on the line too long (other than them seeming to attract summer thunderstorms) and that's the birds who like to come sit on the line. Thanks for stopping by my blog to say hi.

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  3. Nobody in our neighborhood has a clothesline, but I remember from childhood how glorious sheets smelled after being line dried!
    The clothespin bags are great, made with such pretty fabrics.
    I agree with Pakitow, Karen - your blog is wonderful!

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