Do You Remember…taking in Frozen Washing Off The Line?

When i lived in Wyoming i learned, thru observation, that if sunny and i left them out there long enough they would start flapping in breeze again despite low temps and soon be thoroughly dry. It has been the same here in NM. But perhaps that only holds true in some places, places where we have winter days with low temps but lots of sun and wind?
 
dilettante said:
Funny, but yes I do.

This year line-drying was impractical. Too much smoke from Canadian wildfires. I still have one shirt that stinks even after 2 additional washings.
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Oh I'm so sorry. The fires are so upsetting. When we went through this a few years ago, I got 2 over the door little drying racks. I refused to use the dryer when it's hot and couldn't put my clothes on the racks on the patio. With some coated hangers, I was able to dry small loads. Similar to this one but mine are white and were cheaper.
Honey-Can-Do Folding Steel Over-the-Door Mount or Wall Mount Clothes Drying Rack, Gray - Walmart.com
 
Yes, for sure. I was born here on the prairies and I remember frozen washing on the clothesline outside in January that my mother used to hang out. I, for one, really appreciate the washer/dryer in my apartment. The "good ole' days" sometimes were the "tough ole' days."

Having said that, it was the tough ole' days that made us tough ole' seniors with a lot of common sense that I often see missing in some of the younger generation. That's my option; of course.
 
Freeze dried clothes. A standard thing in Canada in the days when we had either a back yard clothes line or a circular drying outside device. I can't think of what we called those things ? A lazy susan type of wire clothes dryer that was fitted into a hole in the ground and it rotated so you could hang up the clothes without walking around in a circle.

Remember hand made clothes pegs that were carved out of a solid piece of wood ? Mum would hang out the clothes in the back yard, in the winter, then later bring them in like pieces of wood, to be defrosted near the furnace in the basement on a dryer rack. She had an electric washing machine with a roller wringer on the top of it.

I learned to wash clothes, dry them in the back yard, and then iron them by the time I was ten. She also taught me how to polish the hardwood strip floors in our 1925 era Toronto house, using Hawe's paste wax and a 2 buffer electric floor polisher. Lovely smell of the floor wax plus the lemon oil she rubbed into the dining room table and chairs once a month. She was a very good housekeeper. JImB.
 
Taking frozen clothes off the line......
AAAHHHHH!!!! My mom would do the wash, and hang it out when it was well below freezing. When I came home from school, it was my job to take them done. The clothes were all frozen to the line. I had to fight to get them off the line, then I had to break them to put them in the basket- and of course-it's freezing!!!!! Then you know what I had to do with the clothes? I had to put them in the DRYER. My mom had to have fresh smelling clothes, aired on the line.
 
Bringing in those frozen diapers like a great big piece of cardboard…leaning these against your wringer washer waiting to spread them on your wooden stand sitting in the bathtub..when the kids today say they did a wash,I could die laughing!
 
Oh yes I remember ..of course. Our washing on the line in Scotland always seemed to freeze when I was growing up. Solid cardboard sheets.. shirts.. etc... all had to be brought in and hung on the ''Pulley''.. which looked like this...
caledonian-clothes-airer-one.gif
..and on the wooden Horse which looked like this...

DSCF5736.jpg
..and as the west of Scotland is very wet..that's why it's so green.... we had washing hanging in the house year round
 
Only times that happened was when it was warm enough to hang them out and had a cold front blow through before they dried.

In winter we hung them on clothes racks in the house and wherever else we could find, backs of kitchen chairs, doors...

In the olden days girls would starch their crinolines with sugar water. I only did it once one summer. Went out to take it off the line and it was crawling with ants.
 
Papa had a hard time convincing Mother that it was best to wait for him and get to laundrymat. So, personally I found it useless that hanging bed clothes on the line in a freek... blizzard.

The sheets would be covered in ice sheets on both sides. You'd get it indoor and you'd get a puddle the size of our local river.

Papa finally got her to go to laundrymat, so we were saved the floods.

I love the facts that, unless it's raining, as it's a downpour tonight, I can hang clothes on line now and it'll be dry. Such a plus!
 

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