Kelly bought a fancy attachment for his drill to clean out the ducts, but we also bought something else I've been wanting for a while: two retractable clothes lines. I've been wanting clotheslines for a while but our yard is so small that I didn't want permanent poles taking up valuable play space. But a few months ago I saw these. They come in various lengths, but I purchased the 40 foot option because of the distance between out porch columns and the back fence. I purchased mine off Walmart.com but Amazon carries them as well.
Today Kelly installed them for me.
The line winds back up inside the housing when not in use. Cool, huh?
To hang clothes, you just pull out the cord and attach it to a hook - ours is screwed into our fence.
And then the girls helped me hang up a small load or towels to test one of the lines out.
Right now, I don't see myself hanging our underwear up out there. Mainly I want it for towels and sheets - those are the loads that take up so much dryer time to dry and heat up the house while they are at it. I've been told that in our summer heat that they dry much faster outdoors than they do in. Of course, I plan on cheating just a bit. I don't like stiff towels anymore than the next person, so I plan on putting them in the dryer on "fluff" (no heat) for about 15 minutes after bringing them inside. I'm curious to see whether it helps out our electric bill this summer.
3 comments:
We used these lines in Hawaii because our dryer was about 20 years old and the electricity was so expensive. If you plan to fluff the towels, either put them into the dryer when they are still a little damp or put a small damp rag in with them. It seemed to work for me. Good luck!
Viv
Thanks for the tip!
I had to laugh at Kora because she looked at the line and said, "It's so old-fashioned! I didn't know they even SOLD clotheslines anymore!"
See now...mine would try to use it as a zip line. ;)
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