A Real Clothesline

I have to admit that I have been hesitant to post a picture of this. It doesn't quite meet my standards of perfection, but then, nothing ever does. So I am going to swallow my pride, post one anyway, then give you my excuses for the imperfections so that I will feel better.

And here it is. After much debate, we finally decided to put up the clotheline in the trailer's back yard. I originally though it might be good to put it close to the new house in a permanent location, but we decided that would be terribly inconvenient, and, besides, we could always move the posts after we moved into the new house. As a result, we did not cement the posts, so one of them is a little crooked. Also, we didn't want to spend the big bucks on the good, plastic-coated, stranded wire until we moved it, so the wire we put up looks a little weird, too. But that's okay (I tell myself over and over).

Now some of you might be wondering why, in this day and age, I would put up a clothesline. I don't know, really. We have a dryer, and after looking up the cost of drying a load of clothes in the dryer, I discovered it will take a while to recoop the cost of the materials in energy savings. Also, I'm not one of  those sorts that is trying to insulate us from a potential societal melt-down (though my husband likes to think along those lines). But I do like the feeling of self-sufficiency. There is something about using the energy of the sun instead of some coal stripped from a mine that was converted to electrity for my convenience while a pile of ash builds up as a potential toxic hazard to the environment. I like not having to pay money for that sort of energy. If only we could wean ouselves off the grid. (But then how would I blog?) And then there is the natural smell of line-dried clothes instead of the choking, perfumey smell of some of those fabric softener sheets.

I remember when I was younger, I was a little irritated by the stiff towels my mother dried on our clothesline. But the occasional stiff towel is a small price to pay for the strange pleasure of standing in the hot sun, feeling the cool, damp fabric blow into my skin and catching that fresh, clean scent in the air. And for a moment, I get to forget the rush of the world around me.