Today is the last day of school.

Last day of school is worse than “renew your driver’s license” day, “file your taxes together” day, or even”time to find a new swimsuit” day.

But since it’s unofficially summer now, I’ll make lemonade with my two new helpers, and since it’s getting warm outside, I’ll write about how to transition from this:

to this:

 

Line dry is cheap, uses less energy, makes your clothes smell nice, kills dust mites, sanitizes, brightens your whites, is easier on your clothes than your dryer, gives you an upper body work out and some Vitamin D, all at the same time.  Blah, blah, you knew all that, let’s get started.

• Try adding 1/4 to 1/2 cup of white vinegar in your washer’s softener tray if you don’t like the stiffness of line-drying.  Vinegar is cheap, usually on-hand and comes in a recyclable container.  It WON’T make your clothes smell like vinegar either.

 

• Wipe off your clothesline.
•  

• • Hang stuff ASAP after laundering.  And give each article a good shake beforehand to head off wrinkles.
  • Make grabbing pins as easy as possible.  I’m left handed so I sling a bag over my right hip.  And since I’m ULTRA-lazy, I put the pins on the outside of my bag so I don’t have to reach inside.  I’m the mother in “Necessity is the mother of invention,” yo.
    
    • Or make a clothespin container out of a milk jug.  I like this one because she’s cut a notch out of the handle to easily remove it from the line.  If you decide to keep it outside permanently, punch a hole in the bottom so rainwater doesn’t collect.
  • Breeze: good.
  • 40 kt-wind:  bad.  Unless you enjoy slinking into your neighbors yard, rescuing your red thong off their patio floor…
  • Fold as you take clothes off the line.  Shake it out once, hand to the eldest to fold.  You are only looking to reduce wrinkles here, not open a JCrew.

• • Check this out:   This gal uses hangers to dry her clothes.  All she has to do is put them away in her closet.  That’s like eight steps less than the rest of us.  I should bring over some Morgan and introduce myself since she clearly has made time for the important things in life.
    

• Don’t keep your pins out on the line.  They’ll totally rot.  Even en Nuevo Mexico.
• **Bonus.  Got a little?  Consider giving her (or him) a clothesline of her (his) own.  I don’t mean for doll clothes either, I mean letting them hang their own undies, at their height.

Next week I’ll make a tutorial on how to actually hang each item.