It’s kinda… sweaty out there. There’s this big ball of fire in the sky and shit. And now I know my back yard has a hovering miasma of dog shit. (Seriously, I only ever go out there to let the dog out! We sit on the front porch.)
I’d like to save some money on the dryer, plus I could stand some more exercise and sunshine and all, and I hope the mighty rays of our nearest star can do something about the goddamned cat pee. So I ordered an umbrella clothesline a week ago. I’ve been meaning to get out there and dig a hole and cement and all, but I can’t find the mattock and I can’t find the shovel and I ask the boyfriend and he says he hasn’t seen them since we buried the dog and now I suspect somebody stole dog gravedigging tools out of our yard and I gave up and went inside.
And had the brilliant idea of a patio umbrella stand, so there.
It isn’t perfect - it’s certainly heavy, but it’s a bit wobbly and I’m concerned that it may be unscrewing itself from the base when I rotate the lines. I may yet dig a hole, but we’ll give it a shot. The inaugural load was stuff I dragged out from under the couch and all since I’ve been cleaning today, so it’s no tragedy if it tips over. (Unfortunately, the sun probably won’t do much for the cat hair, which has impregnated one of our couch throws to the point that it’s going to start meowing for food in the morning with the others.)
I feel so green and cool! But I had to look up online how the hell you hang stuff on a clothesline, which is not green and cool. I got a pack of each kind of clothespin to see what I like - I remember my grandma hated the spring kind because they broke.
Anyway - hints, tips, stories while I’m still all proud of myself?
If your dog can reach the lowest article of clothing on the line, prepare for trouble. That is, if you have another dog that wasn’t buried (my condolences there) and can jump. I have one that can and one that can’t but the one that can’t still manages to get into his own brand of trouble once the clothes are on the ground.
Also dog poop near the clothes on a hot summer day isn’t going to be pleasant. It might stamp out the cat piss smell though!
Some friends of mine have had their clothesline in a patio umbrella stand on top of a patio table for…I dunno, maybe a year? If I see them this weekend, I’ll ask if they did anything special to stabilize it.
At my house, this is how it goes…
Yard Work Method:
Task 1) Scoop dog poo.
Task 2) Transport needed tools/supplies/whatever to work location.
Task 3) Scoop dog poo found during Task 2.
Task 4) Do needed work.
Task 5) As needed, scoop dog poo found during Task 4.
Task 6) After work complete, store tools/supplies/etc.
Task 7) Scoop dog poo found during Task 6.
Task 8) Clean shoes to remove dog poo missed in prior tasks.
I’d agree with Rushgeekgirl. Line-dried clothes smell lovely, all full of sun and breeze. I’m not sure that dog-poop miasma is going to have quite the same effect.
The best thing for cat piss is those enzyme cleaners. They work really well. If you can find a commercial cleaning supply place, they sell it much cheaper than you can find it at stores. But sun and wind can’t hurt!
The dog doesn’t like to go outside, so that’s not a problem. He doesn’t go out alone because he hates being outside so much that he breaks out of the backyard to come around and scratch at the front door.
I couldn’t actually visually find any poop, which makes me concerned that I may actually be standing on a poop mountain, e.g., that it’s all poop. Poop all the way down. I’m not sure how to deodorize the great outdoors, though.
Also, I have gotten the first mosquito bites of the season.
I’m planning a clothesline with, um, those wheelie things that I can’t think of the name for for our backyard this summer. I’ve got our garden patch dug, and soon the clothesline - I’m often struck by how much “reduce, re-use, recycle” looks like how my Mennonite mother looked after a house and yard when I was a kid.
Hey congrats! Welcome to the world of line drying.
I line dry, have for years but never had an umbrella style one. Let us know if you love it, because I’m in a new house and need to switch to an umbrella one myself.
Ok first hint - if there is wet stuff falling out of the sky, bring in the clothes!
Also, to get non-crunchy towels and jeans, either take them down when they are just barely damp and finish them up in the dryer for 10 min, or take them down dry and tumble in the dryer with a damp towel for 10 min.
Dry your sheets outside as much as you can. They’ll smell AWESOME. Mt Saint Poop notwithstanding.
Don’t bother using bleach on your whites if you are going to dry them outside, they’ll get white in the sun anyway.
I’m a fan of the tradional springy wooden pins myself but you have to watch a bit for rust on the hinges…
As soon as you are out of bed tomorrow, get your sheets and pillowcases washed and hang them on the line!!! Then once they’re dry, make your bed, take a shower and go bask in the freshness.
My journey to using a clothes line came in several steps. One was that we got an energy audit of our home and learned that our dryer was the second biggest energy hog in the house (AC was first). I had no idea it used so much electricity! Second was that we lived in Germany for a year, and everyone uses clothes lines there. I figure if I could get away with using one there, with a pretty wet climate, I can certainly use one in Tucson, where it is sunny almost all of the time.
But I still used the dryer sometimes, until one day it clonked and died. Now I use the clothesline exclusively. It works great!
I washed and line dried our couch throws today and all through the movie we watched I kept asking Himself if he could smell how good they smelled. His allergies are in high gear and he can’t smell anything.
He assures me that they probably smell great, though. Theoretically.
Cats HAVE had a good influence on my housekeeping. I know that if I leave the clean laundry in baskets, the cats will sleep on it, and get cat fur all over it, if they don’t pee on it.
The palmetto bugs, on the other hand, have no redeeming qualities. At least the cats are cute, and amusing.
The cats eat the palmetto bugs. Which you can go ahead and call by their real name, you know. Don’t be my mom. “They’re not cockroaches!” Yes, mom. They are. They’re cockroaches that fly. Of course, I have palmetto bugs that come in from the outside. You are a filthy housekeeper and have cockroaches.
The cats won’t eat the little German fuckers that we only met when the neighbors got evicted and fumigated, unfortunately, but I haven’t seen any of those in a while.
I cheerfully told the boyfriend on the way out the door that he might want to check his underwear for spiders and cockroaches. I skittered out the door fast so I didn’t, er, hear what he said in response.
I’d like to be able to put up some sort of outside-drying apparatus, but my neighborhood is old and under a blanket of wall-to-wall trees; no sun hits the yard at all, ever. I’m afraid putting things out to dry will yield sheets and clothes covered in pollen and other various nature-y crap.
OK, they’re flying cockroaches. I hate them. However, the hissing cockroaches give me the screaming meemees, and I’m glad that the local zoo has them safely locked away.
I know. It’s more that my yard is basically like a small clearing in a dense forest. Crap flying everywhere all the time(sometimes literally - my deck turns white with bird shit if I don’t hose it off every couple of weeks).
