Old Fashioned

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  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    Maybe I am just used to my towels and sheets and jeans dried in the fresh air and sunshine - cant say softness is a problem for me doing it that way.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    Not criticizing or being rah! rah! American. Maybe my daughter just hasn’t yet figured out the nuances of air drying inside an apartment, on a miserable wobbling folding rack that takes up half her living space, fogs up her windows, forcing her to open them in the dead of winter, and always leaves the place feeling damp and smelling of wet clothes.

    Hopefully nobody's comment about differences is interpreted as criticism or rah rah! their country :D

    I would probably feel like your daughter too if I lived in an apartment and had no outdoor drying space.

    Mostly here we have an outdoor clothesline - which of course is quite different to drying inside.

    I sometimes put a few slightly damp things inside if I get them off the clothesline and they are not quite dry and I need my uniform for work tomorrow or something like that and finish off a few things on a small folding clotheshorse like you describe - but I agree, it would be difficult to dry everything inside from soaking wet straight out the washing machine.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,164 Member
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    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    PapillonNoire wrote: »

    I've never lived in an HOA neighborhood, but I've heard it's a common rule in many of them to ban the use of outdoor clotheslines. I guess they think it's a poor aesthetic?


    That is a massive cultural difference.

    Here in Australia it is assumed every house has a clothesline - even if you rarely use it,(most people do use them, at least some of the time and many do not even own dryers) it is a thing that houses have.

    I might ask, in a conversation about laundry - Do you have a dryer? - because not everyone does.

    I would not ask Do you have a clothesline? - it would be a given that you do

    (unless you live in a high rise apartment, perhaps - of which there are none in my town)



    Not sure it's so much a cultural difference vs a climate difference. If I understand correctly most of Australia's population lives in a temperate climate as opposed to the IUS where many live in areas where snow and cold temperatures are common. Not very good for clothes lines, so dryers are a must have. When it is a nice day, people generally are used to the convenience of just throwing something in the dryer. Not to mention it's not too easy to dry clothes on a line when it's dark outside and many people may be running the washer and dryer after a work day.

    It's arguably unpleasant to do, but here in Michigan, clothes will dry outdoors on a clothesline in Winter. My mom hung laundry outside sometimes in Winter. It's very low humidity here then, so wind & sun can evaporate the water, even though the clothes freeze quickly (think "freezer burn", which is just stuff drying out while freezing).

    I don't do this with my clothes. That's because I'm lazy, and don't like cold fingers. That's modern of me. 😉

    I keep thinking I should put up a clothesline: No HOA, and it would work great most of the year. If windy, the flapping around has some softening effect. Enough? I guess that's a matter of taste. The clothes smell nice, though.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    paperpudding wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    PapillonNoire wrote: »

    I've never lived in an HOA neighborhood, but I've heard it's a common rule in many of them to ban the use of outdoor clotheslines. I guess they think it's a poor aesthetic?


    That is a massive cultural difference.

    Here in Australia it is assumed every house has a clothesline - even if you rarely use it,(most people do use them, at least some of the time and many do not even own dryers) it is a thing that houses have.

    I might ask, in a conversation about laundry - Do you have a dryer? - because not everyone does.

    I would not ask Do you have a clothesline? - it would be a given that you do

    (unless you live in a high rise apartment, perhaps - of which there are none in my town)



    Not sure it's so much a cultural difference vs a climate difference. If I understand correctly most of Australia's population lives in a temperate climate as opposed to the IUS where many live in areas where snow and cold temperatures are common. Not very good for clothes lines, so dryers are a must have. When it is a nice day, people generally are used to the convenience of just throwing something in the dryer. Not to mention it's not too easy to dry clothes on a line when it's dark outside and many people may be running the washer and dryer after a work day.


    Yes of course climate is a factor too.

    Australia, like US, is a big country geographically - so some people live in cooler, wetter parts than others.

    I don't think all of US is colder and snowier and less daylight hours than all of Australia though - surely Southern/ mid states of US are not so.
    And I'm sure we have similar work days here too.

    I think it is mostly cultural - just googled and there are umpteen references to people in US battling for right to have clotheslines and states making No clotheslines by laws illegal and blogs by Americans surprised at clothesline usage here.

    Something that would be unheard of here - it is a given that a house/ unit/ flat has a clothesline - with possible execption of high rise apartments.




    I think you mean HOAs (homeowner associations), not states.


    No, I meant states - states making laws saying HOA's cannot have by-laws banning clotheslines

    Sorry -- I found the sentence about what the states were doing difficult to parse. To me it read that you were saying that the states were making clotheslines illegal.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    Well, I've learned something new. I had never heard of a rotary dryer for clothes. I have seen a lot of them, especially growing up, but I never heard them called that. At first I thought it was a non-US word for a mechanical dryer (which typically has a drum that rotates, hence "rotary"). I even tried looking it up on Wikipedia and found an article for some kind of mechanical device with industrial applications. But, no, Google informs me it's just an outside pole with short lines linking metal "ribs" (think umbrella) that rotate, so you can bring empty line (or full line, if taking the laundry down) to you, instead of you taking a few steps to get to it.

    My sister took to hanging her laundry up on a line after she moved to the country and retired, but I don't see it as practical for me.

    Even working from home, there's about six months of the year that it's already completely dark by the time I'm done working, and darn little daylight in the morning before I start working. I'd rather use any free time during daylight to take a walk, since I no longer get my unavoidable steps from the walking portion of my pre-working-from-home commute.

    In the summer, when there's plenty of daylight, we have sudden thunderstorms in the afternoon more often than not, often with tornado watches or warnings, and my work is such that dropping everything to dash outside to take in the laundry I hung that morning is often really not an option. If I did, I certainly couldn't take the extra time to fold it then, so it would sit in a basket/pile getting wrinkled. Plus, there's the dust in the outside air, plus the dust brought down by the rain. Not really how I want my clothes smelling.

    But I guess in the end it's just convenience. Using a mechanical washer and dryer, I can get a load of laundry done in the evening even when my physical and mental energy are low, so I can reserve weekends and daylight for outside chores and tasks that take more of my energy.
  • MsCzar
    MsCzar Posts: 1,042 Member
    edited October 2021
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    My parents were children of the Great Depression and were young folk during the second World War. Self-sufficiency and frugality were the order of the day. So I still:

    Dry clothes outdoors, boiler room drying in the winter.
    Home can my own garden which I grow from seeds
    Make my own pectin
    Bake my own bread
    Use an old fashioned gas cooker
    Hand grind bread crumbs
    Make my own yogurt
    Drink stove-top percolated coffee
    Dry herbs from my garden
    Don't have a smart phone!
    Newest vehicle is 10+ year old
    Use paper maps
    Pick wild berries, forage greens & mushrooms
    Make my own laundry detergent
    I can (but don't) sew my own clothes
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    @MsCzar Oh, I'm intrigued about the making your own pectin!

    Part of my interest in this stuff is definitely "what if the worst happens?" and wanting to have a sufficient level of skill so that my family and I could get by reasonably at least for a time without being totally derailed by something like a longer term power outage. I don't think I'm quite at "prepper" level, at least not how it's thought of in the common imagination...but maybe that term does apply, at least a little bit!
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    paperpudding wrote: »
    PapillonNoire wrote: »

    I've never lived in an HOA neighborhood, but I've heard it's a common rule in many of them to ban the use of outdoor clotheslines. I guess they think it's a poor aesthetic?


    That is a massive cultural difference.

    Here in Australia it is assumed every house has a clothesline - even if you rarely use it,(most people do use them, at least some of the time and many do not even own dryers) it is a thing that houses have.

    I might ask, in a conversation about laundry - Do you have a dryer? - because not everyone does.

    I would not ask Do you have a clothesline? - it would be a given that you do

    (unless you live in a high rise apartment, perhaps - of which there are none in my town)



    Not sure it's so much a cultural difference vs a climate difference. If I understand correctly most of Australia's population lives in a temperate climate as opposed to the IUS where many live in areas where snow and cold temperatures are common. Not very good for clothes lines, so dryers are a must have. When it is a nice day, people generally are used to the convenience of just throwing something in the dryer. Not to mention it's not too easy to dry clothes on a line when it's dark outside and many people may be running the washer and dryer after a work day.


    Yes of course climate is a factor too.

    Australia, like US, is a big country geographically - so some people live in cooler, wetter parts than others.

    I don't think all of US is colder and snowier and less daylight hours than all of Australia though - surely Southern/ mid states of US are not so.
    And I'm sure we have similar work days here too.

    I think it is mostly cultural - just googled and there are umpteen references to people in US battling for right to have clotheslines and states making No clotheslines by laws illegal and blogs by Americans surprised at clothesline usage here.

    Something that would be unheard of here - it is a given that a house/ unit/ flat has a clothesline - with possible execption of high rise apartments.




    I think you mean HOAs (homeowner associations), not states.


    No, I meant states - states making laws saying HOA's cannot have by-laws banning clotheslines

    Sorry -- I found the sentence about what the states were doing difficult to parse. To me it read that you were saying that the states were making clotheslines illegal.

    No, quite the reverse.

    Glad it makes sense to you now.
  • MsCzar
    MsCzar Posts: 1,042 Member
    edited October 2021
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    penguinmama87 wrote: »
    @MsCzar Oh, I'm intrigued about the making your own pectin!

    Part of my interest in this stuff is definitely "what if the worst happens?" and wanting to have a sufficient level of skill so that my family and I could get by...

    I make and then can my own pectin from crab apples. There are good step-by-step tutorials online when you search 'crab apple pectin' Basically, it's wash and stem crab apples. Boil. Boil some more. Then boil. You'll know you've done it right if your final strained and cooled product gels in a wee bit of isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. You can also make a habit of saving the pectin-filled fleshy white parts (no outer peels!) of any citrus. Just toss into a baggie in your freezer. The ratio you'll use in cooking varies with how much pectin is needed in what you are making. For example, I use about 1:4 or 1:3 when making preserves and jams from foods that already contain some of their own pectin - and 1:1 or 1:2 for something like dandelion jam.

    I've never thought of myself as a prepper, but was absolutely fine all during the Covid shut down. Since I also keep frozen eggs, my ability to bake (not always a good thing!) never stalled. Even today, in the face of drastically rising food prices and supply issues, my monthly grocery bill is about $20-40USD a month.

    edit: math :D
  • scarlett_k
    scarlett_k Posts: 812 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Well, I've learned something new. I had never heard of a rotary dryer for clothes.

    They're usually called rotary washing lines (most commonly just "the washing line" - I just wrote the type to differentiate between the rotary type and the traditional single line type). I just typed dryer I think because everyone was talking about tumble dryers/clothes dryers and I'm easily influenced 😂
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,365 Member
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    scarlett_k wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Well, I've learned something new. I had never heard of a rotary dryer for clothes.

    They're usually called rotary washing lines (most commonly just "the washing line" - I just wrote the type to differentiate between the rotary type and the traditional single line type). I just typed dryer I think because everyone was talking about tumble dryers/clothes dryers and I'm easily influenced 😂

    I refer to mine as a rotary clothesline. Twice I've had the arms bend 90 degrees from the weight of accumulated wet snow when I haven't closed it up quickly enough in fall so the poor old thing is a bit McGyvered together at this point.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,898 Member
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    MsCzar wrote: »
    My parents were children of the Great Depression and were young folk during the second World War. Self-sufficiency and frugality were the order of the day. So I still:

    Dry clothes outdoors, boiler room drying in the winter.
    Home can my own garden which I grow from seeds
    Make my own pectin
    Bake my own bread
    Use an old fashioned gas cooker
    Hand grind bread crumbs
    Make my own yogurt
    Drink stove-top percolated coffee
    Dry herbs from my garden
    Don't have a smart phone!
    Newest vehicle is 10+ year old
    Use paper maps
    Pick wild berries, forage greens & mushrooms
    Make my own laundry detergent
    I can (but don't) sew my own clothes

    I'll trade you a moisturizing soap recipe for your laundry detergent recipe :smiley:

    https://bodyunburdened.com/diy-all-natural-rich-creamy-moisturizing-hand-soap/

    Not sure there is any cost savings due to needing the dispenser and the cost of the ingredients, but I love it!
  • MsCzar
    MsCzar Posts: 1,042 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »

    I'll trade you a moisturizing soap recipe for your laundry detergent recipe

    It's pretty simple and there are lots of variations on the theme to be found online.

    Ingredients:
    1 grated bar of Zote Soap, In the US, Big Lots usually has it for $1. If you don't want to grate the bar yourself, you can buy Zote soap flakes for at least double the price of the bar.

    4 cups Borax powder

    4 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda! - Although some people like to add a small box of that. I don't.

    Optional: 2 cups Oxy-Clean (brand or generic) and scent. I dump in a whole bottle of dollar store Fabuloso scent crystals.

    Some people like to use the 5 gallon bucket and boiling water method. Me? I prefer to use a very large dedicated pot of near boiling water on the cooker top. How much water doesn't really matter since you'll eventually dilute the mixture into 5 gallons. The detergent is very concentrated and 1/2 cup will clean a extra large load.

    Once everything is dissolved, I let it cool and divide it equally into those very large liquid laundry containers with the handy spigot. I've used the same extra large plastic containers for 15 years! I add very hot water to fill the containers and shake. Be sure to give it a good shake before every use. This laundry soap will not suds up, so don't expect to see foamy bubbles; but it takes only about a half cup of liquid to get your laundry very clean.




  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,898 Member
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    ^ thanks!
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    ythannah wrote: »
    scarlett_k wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Well, I've learned something new. I had never heard of a rotary dryer for clothes.

    They're usually called rotary washing lines (most commonly just "the washing line" - I just wrote the type to differentiate between the rotary type and the traditional single line type). I just typed dryer I think because everyone was talking about tumble dryers/clothes dryers and I'm easily influenced 😂

    I refer to mine as a rotary clothesline. Twice I've had the arms bend 90 degrees from the weight of accumulated wet snow when I haven't closed it up quickly enough in fall so the poor old thing is a bit McGyvered together at this point.

    I think I've just always heard them called clotheslines. I guess I never had a conversation in which it was necessary to differentiate.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    A rotary clothesline is one of those with a central pole and the squares of lines rotate around.

    A s opposed to a fixed line clotheslines with rows of straight lines attached to a wall or posts.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    Rbpczcfhu1hsa.jpg


    Rotary clothesline
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,995 Member
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    smdzz75i5dwy.jpg




    Fixed line clothesline
  • scarlett_k
    scarlett_k Posts: 812 Member
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    paperpudding wrote: »
    smdzz75i5dwy.jpg




    Fixed line clothesline

    Never seen one of those in the UK! A traditional washing line here is usually a single line anchored at two points and sometimes supported by a pole or poles along the length. They're often retractable these days as well so you can easily put them away when not in use. I don't understand them really but they're still pretty popular up north.

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