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For the last few weeks I've been taking advantage of our breezy, hot weather. We have a Coleman portable clothesline for camping, and I decided to break it out and see how drying laundry outside would go.

There's something satisfying about hanging clothes to dry in the sun, I've discovered.

You'd think it would take much longer to do than drying in the dryer. Although hanging each item takes longer than tossing a load into the dryer, most of the clothes dry just as quickly as they would in the dryer. Some even dry faster. I was just hanging some of Bryan's PT shorts out there, and by the time I hung the rest of the load, they were already dry. Jeans and other items with multiple layers of fabric (like waistbands or pockets) sometimes take a little longer.

Another nice thing about it is that I can take the clothes off the line at my leisure. They don't get wrinkly from beign forgotten and cooling in the dryer. Speaking of forgetting, I can't really forget about the laundry on the line, since I can see it clearly through the sliding glass door in the living room.

We're also saving a lot of energy by not running the dryer for each load. The thing takes about an hour to dry each load, and while I can't speak to the actual amount of electricity it uses, NOT using it clearly saves energy.

Saving energy = saving money. I guess we'll see when we get our next electric bill how much. We have had to run the AC for about a month now, so maybe conserving energy in the laundry department will dull the spike we would experience thanks to the heat. (Supposed to be 91 today, by the way.)

Also, it is a nice excuse to spend a little bit in the sunshine.... get some vitamin D. If it's not too windy, Caleb and Micah will enjoy some time playing outside as well.

Another thing... I have clear, vivid memories of my grandma hanging her laundry outside at her house in Lima when I was a tiny tot. Mostly I remember sheets, but I'm positive she did all her laundry by hand. That includes washing by hand with a big cream-colored bar of laundry soap. She had a machine, but I never saw it running. I guess old habits die hard.

I have to admit I HATE to hand wash anything. So I do live and die by my washing machine, but I can step outside our generation and line dry to my little heart's content. The ONLY things I don't like to line dry are the towels. They just don't fluff up to their nice soft towelliness otherwise. But that's ok.

By the way, I bought my clothespins from the cleaning products aisle of the commissary for something like two to three dollars.

So now I'm thinking I might ask Bryan to construct a real clothesline because as it is, I can usually fit a whole load onto the one line. But often I run out of space, and if I'm doing two loads in a row, I have to wait for the first one to dry before I can hang the next. Things would go even faster if I had more line space. We'll just have to figure a way to do it that doesn't affect the property since we rent. (boo)