The Clothes Line

After toting wet, heavy baskets of laundry from the house out to the dryer in the garage, getting a brand new, energy efficient stacking set in the house was.... well, amazing. REally. I had no idea how much one can stuff into a front loading washer. I feel so lucky, in any case, that I don't have to carry all our clothes to the river and hand wash like many other humans on this planet. I tend to appreciate what I have as long as it keeps working. But real energy efficient appliances are wonderful, quiet, handsome, and save in water and energy bills. Now I do one load a day. Not bad.

Recently, I realized I can wear some of my favorite special clothes, and kinda costumy stuff because my kids are old enough. If you have kids you'll understand this. If you don't have kids, you only need to know that kids are wonderful little mess machines that tend to use their mommies as their favorite hand towel. They don't mean to, it's just what they do. They are busy little explorers of nature, food, and emotion. Tears and snot can be rough on your silk blouses.

I used to wear fine materials, ethnic prints, exotic textures, and spend time dressing up for my days. Kids come along and are another sort of amazing outlet that we pour our creativity into, and they deserve it...... a few years pass..... then suddenly they are a little older and mum remembers to put back some of her favorite things into her life, like dress ups. Kids are wearing their fav capes and mum is wearing her hand batik butterfly outfit from the 70's. Mum has a wee bit of time to enjoy a little eccentricity and time to hand wash the thing.... and I've worked my way around to the topic: I've hung a clothes line!

Here in Oregon, with the famous weather and all, we don't have as many clothes lines as in other places. (Like in Australia where many people don't own a dryer at all.) I bought myself a lovely special bottle of hand washing liquid, and washed some fine clothing items I've pulled from storage. Dried 'em on the line in the breeze. Brought them in. Ah, I'd forgotten how GOOD line dried clothes smell!!! It's wonderful!!! If you haven't dried clothes via mother nature recently, or ever, promise me you'll try it? Devine.

Cheers to simple joys!