One thing to keep in mind when you start using your clothesline is that while it dries your clothes just as effectively as a standard dryer, it handles your clothes differently. Just as there are things to look out for when using a regular clothes dryer, there are good things and bad things to do with your retractable clothesline. Let’s take a look at what they are and what we should to to avoid trouble.
The first thing to think about is how the air is going to flow into and through the clothes and other laundry items you have on the line. If you have a multi-line clothesline, this is an especially important thing to consider. You need to put your smaller items – socks, underwear, etc – on the outer lines and put your bigger items – sheets, covers, jackets, etc – on the inside lines. If you put your bigger items on the outside, then the sheets are going to keep the air from flowing freely to dry your socks in the middle.
If you have a single line clothesline, then this is less of an issue but still something to think about. If the air in your yard tends to flow in one direction, due to the location of your house and trees and whatnot, then put your smaller items on that side of the line and your bigger items towards the back.
When you hang your clothes on the line, give some thought to exactly how you hang them. Shirts work best when they are hung upside down – they dry more quickly and you can also avoid having any line or pin marks on the neck or shoulders of the shirt. Also, the area under the clothespin will take much longer to dry than the rest of the item, so avoid putting the thick part of the item under the pin. For example, the belt line and ankle cuffs of pants are thicker than the rest of the pants material, so those areas will take longer to dry. If you hang pants by the belt line, it will never get dry since it’s under the clothespin. You can avoid this by hanging pants upside down or by the knees.
Another handy trick is to put items of clothing right next to each other on the line and attach them to the line with the same clothespin. This way, instead of needing four pins for two items, you only need three. This can come in very handy if you’re running out of pins and still have several items to hang up.
There are a number of options on where to go when you decide to buy a retractable clothesline. Let’s take a look at where to go and what to expect.
The usual mega mart suspects may actually come up a bit short here. A quick search on Walmart.com and Target.com didn’t bring up many results – in fact, only one total for Walmart. Selection was limited and you won’t find many options available at either website. Your local store may have more selection, and the big stores like these may treat clotheslines as a seasonal item and display them more prominently in the spring.
The same pretty much holds true for the big name home and garden stores. Both Lowe’s.com and Home Depot.com returned about 12 to 15 results from the search, and a few of those results were not exactly what we’re looking for. The clothesline may be a seasonal thing for these stores as well, but I would think that you would always be able to find it on their website if they have it.
Your local hardware store is most likely going to be hit or miss. Ours seems to carry one or two items occasionally, but never much selection and we really never know whether they’re going to have it in stock or not.
I think the best place to check out a wide selection of retractable clotheslines and accessories, such as additional lines and clothespins, is probably Amazon.com. They have over 40 different models and several different types of clotheslines, both retractable and fixed. Among the retractable models, they have single line versions and multiple line models as well. (The multiple line clotheslines are great, in case you haven’t seen them. They have a bar that comes out of the base with 3 or 5 lines attached to it, giving you many more times the space of a typical retractable clothesline.)
Amazon also has a wide selection of fixed clotheslines, if those are more up your alley, including umbrella style clotheslines and the more traditional two-pole-line-in-the-middle clotheslines.
To check out Amazon’s retractable clothesline selection, click here.
Using a clothesline is not something that many people probably give a lot of thought to, but it’s something that can be a real pain in the neck if you don’t go about it properly. In this post, we’re going to take a look at how to use a retractable clothesline in the right way and see what we need to do in order to use one well so that it is actually helpful and not a hindrance.
The first thing that you need to do when you’re going to use your clothesline is to make sure that it’s installed correctly. You don’t want to put up a whole load of freshly washed clothes and then have your clothesline snap off of the wall and dump your laundry in the dirt. When you’re installing the line, make sure to follow the instructions carefully and do exactly what they say. Take your time and make sure to do things right here, and you’ll be much happier with your clothesline later.
Once your line is ready to use, grab your bag of clothespins, and take your laundry basket full of clean clothes out to the line. Use the pins to securely fasten the clothes on the line, and make sure to put them on evenly. You don’t want too much weight on one end or on one part of the line.
One important tip is to make sure that you have enough daylight left in the day to dry your clothes thoroughly. This is not something that will strike you as obvious from the start, especially if you’re used to using a conventional dryer, but you don’t want your clothes to stay out overnight and get rained on, and putting your clothes up and taking them down twice is not a good way to go about saving time. Make sure that they’ll be able to dry completely before you put them out on the line. And it goes without saying, if it’s cloudy and rain is coming, don’t put them up!
Once the clothes are dry, take your basket out to the line and start taking the clothes down. A great time-saving tip is to fold the clothes as you put them into the basket, which will save you from having to take them out of the basket and do that later. I also just leave my clothespins out on the line. They get rained on occasionally, but it doesn’t really hurt them and it saves me from having to take them down and put them back on every time I need to dry a load of clothes.
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