Attempting Green

Fifteen years ago I had a huge clothesline in the back yard. Dairy farming at the time, we generated a lot of dirty laundry! I remember one Saturday afternoon, after washing continuously all day, counting thirty-five t-shirts hanging on the line – plus fifteen pairs of jeans, twenty-five pairs of socks and a dozen towels.

Eventually the cows were sold, the boys grew up and moved away, and my huge clothesline was usually empty. Mickey told me, “I don’t like the smell of the clothes after you take them off the line. They smell like air.” My husband said, “My clothes are too stiff and scratchy when they come off the line.” I simply thought, “are they crazy, or what?”

But, after getting tired of avoiding the clothesline with the lawnmower and trimming with the weed eater around its frame, I eventually found a new home for it. A woman I work with, who lived on a dairy farm with her husband and her three boys took it ever so graciously out of my yard. The clothesline was finally gone … until this spring.

That’s when I decided I wanted to go green, but with a smaller version of the clothesline.

After much thought, I bought a little umbrella-style portable clothesline that I could fold up and put aside when I wasn’t using it. Eager to install it, but dismayed when the directions told me that I needed a bag of quick setting cement for the post, I had to wait until I went back to town. A week later, armed and ready, I finally convinced my husband to dig a hole for me. Three days later, he actually dug the nice, neat hole, and we added the cement. It set up quickly and I knew that the next morning I would be able finally use my clothesline!

Early Saturday morning I threw a load of jeans into the washer. As soon as they were done washing, I grabbed them and went out to the line. Oops, I realized that I forgot one important thing – clothes pins! I flopped the jeans over the line anyway.

An hour later … it started raining … and rained off and on all day.

I took them back off the line, and put them on again - twice.

Finally, I brought the jeans in and threw them into the dryer.