Airing My Dirty Laundry
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You know when your day is going along too well that something is going to go wrong.  Really, really wrong, just when you least expect it.  It happened to me the other morning.  I was scurrying about, running through my chores at lightning speed, aiming for a 10 AM brunch with Electric Horseman in town at our favorite café. 

My final task of the morning was to hang the third load of clothes on the line and I’d be done.  Yes, I must confess to you that I’m a miser.  I wash our clothes in cold water and hang them on the line (my solar dryer) to dry.  Inclement weather?  I hang them on my indoor clothesline – a fine one, if I say so myself, that I brought home with me from France.  Those French – they know a thing or two about drying clothes.  Electricity is prohibitively expensive in France, so line drying is the way to go.   I practically swooned when I saw the selection of clothes dryer racks available for indoor use.  I brought six of them home with me to share with friends and family.  I wish I’d brought twice as many for the people who’ve seen them and then asked about how to get one.

I line-dry our clothes even though several years ago we covered our barn roof with solar panels to generate our share of electricity.  My goal is still to have a credit on our bill each month.  And it makes no sense to me to run a dryer (gas or electric) when there is a perfectly good solar system working outside, or a woodstove working inside.

Normally, I wash the clothes and Butterfly hangs them.  She thinks this is a fair trade for me doing her laundry.  She has a washer and dryer but, Butterfly being Butterfly, she uses them for storage of very important items.  The dryer, for instance, stores Styrofoam containers.  I’m not sure what’s in the washer these days – probably Easter candy from several years ago.  When I was a kid, she used to hide potato chips in the dryer so that my dad wouldn’t find them.  She always had him on a diet.  And yes, she always hung her clothes on the line, too, so what else would she do with her dryer but use it for storage?

But once again, I digress.  There I was, hanging the last of the clothes on the line, when suddenly I heard an ominous cracking sound and the next thing I knew the entire clothesline collapsed at my feet … on the dirty ground!  With all of my clean laundry in a heap!

Oh. My. Gosh.

Dang!  Talk about bad karma!  There went sheets, jeans, whites … you name it, it was all crumpled there on the ground.  I was stunned.  I was speechless.

looks bad from any angle

I looked around, trying to figure out what to do.  How would I get the clothes back into the laundry basket sitting on Dusty’s tailgate, perhaps salvaging some clean ones?  Clearly a second pair of hands would be helpful.  If we could lift straight up, maybe we could minimize what got dragged through the dirt.

Butterfly was gone to kindergarten painting class, so I couldn’t get her to help.

My next thought was my neighbor, who I help daily with her injured horse.  Maybe she could come over to help.  I dialed her number, but there was no answer.  Dang!

I made sure there were no dogs in the vicinity to do further damage to my “clean” laundry and ran up the hill to Electric Horseman’s office (which is above Butterfly’s house).  I knew he was on a business call, but this was an emergency!  I stuck my head in the door, signaling that I needed to talk to him.  He rolled his eyes (his favorite gesture to me when he’s working). 

“I have a bit of a catastrophe,” I whispered.

He muted the phone and asked, “What?”

“The clothesline collapsed with 3 loads of laundry on it!”

He looked at me for a few seconds and then said, “Oh, great!  Now what?”

I looked at him for a few seconds, shook my head, closed the door, and left.  Not quite the support I was looking for.  I trotted back down to my pile of laundry and studied the situation.

it's still there, in a heap

I got a second laundry basket to put on Dusty’s tailgate and began removing articles of laundry from the mess on the ground, piece by piece.  Surprisingly, many were clean as a whistle.  I guess there was more gravel (clean gravel) under the clothesline than I thought.  One laundry basket got clean items, one got items that needed to be washed again.

dirty on the left, clean on the right

Eventually Electric Horseman joined me and helped with the removal and sorting process.  We ended up with a more clean clothes than dirty, thankfully.  The basket on the right contained the clean clothes that I hung on my indoor rack. 

it let me down

Here are the sad remains of my clothesline.  I decided the next load of clothes could wait to be washed until after brunch, plus I was bumping up against “expensive electricity time”.  When we installed the solar panels, we installed time-of-use meters.  Our electric rates are highest between noon and 6pm, but the electricity we generate during that time is also credited to our account at the higher rate.  I refuse to allow any electrical devices to be run (well, ok, except maybe for a laptop or two), during those hours.  The next load of laundry could wait until evening.

Texas clothesline

While I’m on the hunt for a replacement clothesline (good ones are hard to find), I may just have to resort to this method I saw once in Texas.  Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.