At our house, we use drying racks (one is foldable, the other is wheeled) both indoors and outdoors. I can deal with the (initially) crusty towels.
It rains too much here to put washing out on a line. I remember putting washing out once, started at one end got to the other, it started to rain.
:smack:
I don’t have a clothesline anymore (had a rotary one, but it rusted and broke), I put clothes over a clothes horse overnight, then throw them in the dryer next day.
We only use an electric dryer in the middle of winter or when the children’s school shirts are needed dry next morning. Clotheslines are standard eqipment for any home in NZ although I’m sure there are apartment buildings where drying clothes on the balcony is prohibited.
In an age when we are conscious of energy wastage it defies comprehension that most people don’t take advantage of the sun and wind.
I find that if I shake them out of the mangled ball they become in the washer, they dry faster. I also hang a large majority of my tops on hangers to dry, so I like to shake the wrinkles out first. 
I have an inside line in my utility room in the basement that I use year round, and an outside line in the back yard now, that I use less frequently (but it’s still nice to have to freshen up sheets that have been in the linen closet before putting them on the bed).
When we lived in Berlin, SO and I had a washing machine but no dryer - had to hang things indoors (crappy Berlin weather) 90% of the time to dry.
HATED IT!
Took forever for jeans to dry or other clothes, you needed a map to get to our bed and crawl around the damned clothes hanging everywhere, and everything was “crunchy” once it dried.
Plus, if you forgot to wash your favorite shirt/pants in time, you knew it was a good two days before you would be wearing it by the time you washed it and it dried.
So, I am quite happy to have a clothes dryer now…although there was that little incident with the dryer catching on fire and the fire department showing up and getting insurance coverage and the stench of smoke in the house and putting in new floors and getting a new dryer…but other than that little snafu…
Speaking of which - I found my old thread about the infamous clothes dryer fire.
The follow up story is the cause of the fire, only determined months later when my cousin (the ex-fireman) and his wife came to visit. He didn’t figure it out - she did!
It seems when my house was built (stucco), they accidentally stuccoed over the exhaust vent flap from the dryer outside - so for YEARS, all the the lint from my dryer was stuck in there! Needles to say, the heat eventually built up, causing that fire. The Fire Department didn’t see it, the insurance adjuster didn’t see it, only my cousin’s wife was smart enough to go outside to see if the vent was working!
Once we opened it, years and years of lint came flying out of there like there was no tomorrow! Ever since, the dryer has worked quite nicely.
I would think you could find liquid fabric softener in every Target, K-Mart, Wal-Mart and major supermarket in the US. It’s available in any decent sized drugstore. It’s available in most, but not all, places that sell laundry detergent. Oddly enough, it’s usually in the aisle with laundry detergent, dryer sheets, bleach, OxyClean, pre-treaters, stain removers, etc. It is in no way scarce or esoteric. They even have little plastic dispenser balls for using it in washing machines that don’t have built in dispensers.
I am utterly perplexed that you had difficulty finding liquid fabric softener in the US.
My neighborhood HOA has a ton of weird rules that are partly for aesthetics’ sake and partly to help fuel paranoia. Laundry lines showing = there might be folks who are too poor to use the dryer every time. :eek: For shame! :rolleyes:
IIRC, Nava lived in Miami for a while, which has a plethora of different food and household goods markets, including traditional supermarkets, bodegas, food marts, etc. The goods offered from store to store can vary widely, even at, say, Publix, our biggest and most popular regional chain grocery. However, though it may have been more difficult at the time she was living there, it’s certainly a lot easier to find liquid fabric softener in the grocery store these days. She may have been asking someone who was not familiar with the concept or happened to be in stores that didn’t stock it because it was unpopular or cost prohibitive to the owner of that grocery.
These days? Downy was introduced to the national market in December, 1961. Snuggle became available nationally in 1983. I don’t know when Nava was in the U.S. but if it’s been in the last 50 years, and especially in the last 30, it shouldn’t have been that hard to find in supermarkets.
Sometimes, when having come back from a day at the beach especially, I wash, then hang some brightly coloured sarongs, couple of towels, etc, I think, “This is the prettiest washing line on my block, surely!”
Mine runs down the side of my house, as I have mullberry trees in the back.
Depending on where she was shopping, they may not have carried domestic brands of cleaning products at all. And apparently you’ve also decided to ignore the idea I presented about the stores not carrying it due to not being able to sell the stuff. Some populations don’t like or use certain products, so stores don’t stock it.