March 29, 2024

Go Green . . . Bring Back the Clothes Line

You may have to be a “certain age” to appreciate this article. But you younger ones can read about “The good ol’ days”! (If you don’t even know what clotheslines are, then better skip this.)

Many Boomers can hear their mothers still as she explained how to hang the wash…


  1. You had to hang the socks by the toes…not the top.
  2. You hung pants by the bottoms/cuffs…not the waistbands. And all clothes had to be turned inside out just because a bird might fly overhead and you didn’t want that showing. I didn’t want that next to my skin, but mother was the boss.
  3. clothesline picYou had to wash the clothesline(s) before hanging any clothes–walk the entire length of each line with a damp cloth around the lines.
  4. You had to hang the clothes in a certain order, and always hang “whites” with “whites,” and hang them first.
  5. You never hung a shirt by the shoulders–always by the tail! What would the neighbors think?
  6. Wash day on a Monday! Never hang clothes on the weekend or on Sunday for Heaven’s sake!
  7. Hang the sheets and towels on the outside lines so you could hide your “unmentionables” in the middle (perverts and busybodies, y’know!)
  8. It didn’t matter if it was sub-zero weather… clothes would “freeze-dry.”
  9. Always gather the clothes pins when taking down dry clothes! Pins left on the lines were “tacky”!
  10. If you were efficient, you would line the clothes up so that each item did not need two clothes pins, but shared one of the clothes pins with the next washed item.
  11. Clothes off of the line before dinner time, neatly folded in the clothes basket, and ready to be ironed.
  12. Ironed? Well, that’s a whole other subject!

 

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