Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Sad 'n' Saggy

Lame.

I found a retractable clothesline at Fred Meyer this week, which cost about $20. I'm a little worried about how I'll like line drying, and if I'll be able to stick to it. Some people are more likely to stay the course with something if they have laid out money for it. I'm not that way. Once the money is gone, it's gone, so I'm not inspired to stick to things just because they were expensive.  Twenty bucks isn't a ton of money, but I was pretty sure I could do it cheaper.

I bought a skein of clothesline, two eye bolts, a couple of openable links, and some clothespins for under $10.



Our yard really isn't the right dimensions for a clothes line, no trees and it's 35 feet or so across. Putting in the line was a tad annoying, looking for the right size drill bit (it turned out to be in the hammer drill, I couldn't get it out, so I ended up just sticking with the hammer drill. That thing is LOUD.), trying to work around the ivy on the porch which the previous owner stapled to the supports to help it climb, finding out that while one link opened wide enough to accommodate the eye bolt, the other didn't. Just little diy nuisances.



I finally got the thing installed. We have high efficiency front-loaders, so a lot of the water spins out. I'm hoping things will dry quickly on a line. I started with a lighter blanket that I washed last night; I wanted to see if I need a center support for the line. Answer:

Pay no attention to the dying grass...

Uh, yeah. I need a support

I was hoping to find something to repurpose as a support, but there isn't much around here that would work. I tried turning the ladder ball PVC piping into a T...yeah broke that. So I have to shop around. I would have had this same issue with the retractable line, the yard is just a little wide. Hopefully I find a way to support it, I don't want to put the money into an umbrella dryer or the kind that bolts onto the house.

Here's a great resource to see all the options out there: Tip the Planet

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