Use Downy or any other fabric softener.
They have clotheslines at my daughter’s dorm in college.
We don’t use one now, but this thread has me thinking about my childhood.
We had one running across the whole backyard from a second story window to the corner of the detached garage. We had to lug up the wet laundry from the basement to the second floor, but the clothesline did not impede use of the backyard.
I see them in the U.K. more than I see them hereabouts. But we have a long, tough winter. I do miss the feel and scent of line-dried sheets.
That’s me. I have a clothesline outside, under a lean-to, and one in the basement for winter. I don’t have a dryer.
It’s a handy arrangement. I do the laundry once a forthnight, hang the clothes for about three days on the line, where they have a place to hang, unwrinkled, untill my cleaning lady takes them down and irons them. Sheets I hang outside as soon as weather permits, and they go on my bed without ironing, nice and fresh from outside.
They’re becoming less common in the UK too but I think you’re right that they are more common than in most of the US. Not that I have any statistics for this directly, though tumble dryer ownership has increased. It still lags behind the UK - this article that talks about clothes line bans in the US mentions that tumble dryer ownership in the UK is now 45% compared to 79% in the US (they’re probably talking about tumble dryers you own yourself rather than communal laundries in an apartment building).
FWIW everyone I know who has the ability to dry clothes outside, ie. a big enough garden or balcony, does so at least some of the time. They seem, IME, to be less likely to use an actual clothes line though. They might use a rotary airer or just put a clothes horse outside so they can easily bring it inside.
I have an arrangement that I’m ridiculously proud of. 
My house, like many in England, has a “side return,” a bit that runs down the side of house or the side of one room and leads to the main garden but doesn’t get much sunlight and is usually concreted. Mine came with a utilising some of that space, so I’ve put a caravan clothes airer - the kind that you hang out of a window - in holes that I drilled on top of the shed, plus a clothes line that goes diagonally across the space, plus the clothes horse if there’s lots of washing. I nearly always put my clothes on hangers before putting them out - they dry without creases and it’s easy to bring them in when it rains. Underwear goes on a tent-peg thing.
None of the neighbours can see the stuff, neither can I from most of the garden, and it uses a space that would otherwise be not terribly useful.
Indoors I have a collapsible bar attached to one wall which I can hang the clothes from, high above the hallway radiator, an airer hung on the door of the cupboard the washing machine is in (most homes don’t have this sort of cupboard), plus the ubiquitous over-radiator airers and the stair banisters.
My previous flat was plagued by washing being hung all over the place all the bloody time. We even had a tumble dryer/washing machine combi but it’s no good for jeans, jumpers, or anything in any way sensitive, and it takes a very small load, so in practice you’d wash a load and then dry half of it in the machine and hang the other half up and the tumbled-dried half would be all crinkly. Most British homes don’t have the space for those enormous separate dryers that work quite efficiently in the US, and for clothes drying, size does matter - the clothes need space for the air to move around.
I have to say, even during the time when my dryer broke and I lived without it for months on end, I have never known anyone - it has never even occurred to me - to hang washing on a banister.
It makes perfect sense on principle, only, how do you keep it from just sliding down?
One thing about Kathmandu is it’s not uncommon to find 1500-year-old statues on many residential streets … which the locals use to hang their laundry on.
Ever since I moved into this house, I’ve been trying to figure out where to put a laundry line. It’s spring, and I really want to start hanging my laundry out. Sure, it’s a bit more work than just moving it from the washer to the dryer - lug the laundry outside, peg out all the items one at a time, wait, then take it all down piece by piece and bring it all back inside, but there’s something nice about that few minutes outside on a nice day, getting everything out on the line. On a warm summer day, it can be dry almost as fast as in the dryer.
Last house was in a neighbourhood that was very working class when the houses were built. Just about every yard had a pole at the end to attach a laundry line. Not everyone used them, but most of my surrounding neighbours did, as did I.
All my apartments in Spain have had either clotheslines or a similar all-metal arrangement. The one I’m in now belongs to a friend; the last renters left the place a shambles and I’m fixing it for him. One of the things I’ve done is remove the old clothes-drying-thing (all metal, set at a dangerous height and rusted to hell) from the balcony’s wall and find a replacement.
The replacement is also metallic, but it’s aluminum and it’s put-on take-off. I can hang it from the balcony railing (either to the outside or inside), or I can plonk it atop the bathtub if the weather doesn’t look good.
For parts North of the Pyrenees, it’s been either “there’s a laundry room in the building” or “there’s a launderette nearby”.
TruCelt, IME most clothing will stay put on a banister if neither side weighs too much more than the other. It’s more likely to fall down than slide down. Shower curtain bars are also good.
Thanks for the name! It’s one of those that makes perfect sense when you encounter it but which I would never have thought of.
I agree! It’s another reason to get outside and enjoy the weather after being cooped up for 7 months.
I have the t-shaped poles in my back yard, but the clothesline rotted years ago and I’ve never been compelled to replace it. About the only thing I ever dried on the line were blankets and sheets.
To dry clothes on the line properly someone has to be at home attending to them. I think people are just home less and it’s much easier to just throw them in the dryer and walk away.
I don’t think using the banister is ubiquitous, just the over radiator things. We put big things like towels and sheets on the banister itself, and they only slide a bit when they’re nearly dry. Mainly though we just hang clothes from clothes hangers hooked between the balusters (the spindle bits). It helps that our flat is upside down, so the staircase leads from the ground floor to the basement, so the side of our stairs isn’t in a high traffic area.
Just shy of 2 years late in replying, but hey, what can I say, I’m a newbie to the forum.
Nonetheless, having a deep down love for all things retro, I’m not going to allow a topic such as this to slip by me without replying to.
Good old-fashioned outdoor clotheslines are still alive and well where we live. I definitely see a decline in clothesline use compared to back in the day (1970’s/80’s), but clothesline drying (by no means) has gone by wayside. When my kids were little, diapers and rubber pants hung from my clothesline every second to third day, and to this day I still line-dry religiously from spring until fall.
I have one! I can see it outside of the window by my desk.
I dried my clothes on it pretty religiously when Mrs. Homie and I first moved here, but for some reason she hates the smell clothes take on when they’re dried outside. We use a dryer.
Our neighbourhood was built in the 40s/50s and the older houses still have their ‘standard’ clothesline posts integrated into their back fence. Some of the houses still have the reel attached to the house as well. However, hardly anyone dries their clothes outside and there’s only a handful of the original houses left that maintained the air drying apparatus.
Clothes driers are just so cheap and reliable today that the effort of drying outside is much higher than just chucking it all in the dryer.
I bought my grandfathers house from his estate back in 1977. It was built in 1928. That was the last time I ever used a clothes line, in fact around 1979ish it got taken down. I sold the house in 1986 when my “then new” house was ready. Never used one in over 40 years.
We have a clothes line in the back yard. Only one in the neighborhood. We have an electric dryer so I googled the cost of doing one load of clothes in the dryer. The average cost of using an electric dryer is 45 cents per load. Whenever I put a load on the line I yell out to the neighbors “I’m saving 45 cents. Bwaaaahaaaahaaaa.” In my best Vincent Price voice. 
We have a clothes line in the back yard. Only one in the neighborhood. We have an electric dryer so I googled the cost of doing one load of clothes in the dryer. The average cost of using an electric dryer is 45 cents per load. Whenever I put a load on the line I yell out to the neighbors “I’m saving 45 cents. Bwaaaahaaaahaaaa.” In my best Vincent Price voice.
My paternal grandfather was a successful inventor. Which doesn’t mean that everything he invented was a good idea.
When he built his house ca. 1935, he designed a clothes dryer. In this era, ringer washers were available, but not dryers. His house was heated by steam pipes, so he made a small shed – more of a bin – on the inside wall of the basement, and ran the pipes back and forth inside the cabinet. Clothes could be hung on the horizontal pipes, a fan ventilated to the outside, and when the door was closed, it made a dryer. He thought it was clever.
My grandmother didn’t. She carried the laundry out to the backyard anyway. To this day, I don’t know why.
Aus. I live in the ticky-tacky houses on the tiny lots of the outer suburbs.
I’ve got a rotary clothes hoist in the backyard, and a drying rack in the laundry, and my wife has an electric dryer in the laundry Most clothes dry hanging from overhead in the laundry. Sheets, jeans etc on the lines outside. In wet weather the electric dryer gets used sometimes. Dunno what my neighbors use.
The electric dryer does wear out towels. That together with the water-efficient washing machine take the nap off and put the holes in clothes faster than anything I ever had when single.