The phone said 27 degrees and sunny until nine at night, and I did what anyone with a rotary line would do. I lifted the lid of the laundry basket, then the second basket, then looked at the pile at the end of our bed, and started working out an order. It was Saturday 21 June, the longest day of the year, and there was a lot of washing and a lot of daylight.
Rob had left for work at twenty past five in broad daylight. By 6:40 the garden was already bright and completely still, the kind of morning where the cord on the line doesn't move. I got the first load on before the kettle had boiled. By eight Jean's line was out as well, and we nodded to each other across the fence like two people running the same small business.
Five loads before tea
Our line takes about one big load at a time, or a load and a bit if it's mostly small stuff. In this heat things dry in two hours, so the plan was a conveyor belt: wash, hang, bring in, repeat, with the machine always one load ahead of the line.
The bath towels went out at 8:10 and came in at five past ten. Rob's work shorts and polo shirts, the PE kit and the swimming bag, all cottons, went out at ten past ten and were dry by ten past twelve. Isla's bedding went on at 12:20, duvet cover over two lines so it wouldn't fold in on itself, and was in by quarter past two with the seams still a bit damp. Alfie's bedding and a mixed pile of pyjamas went out at 2:25. The last load, school polo shirts and pinafores for Monday, went on the line at half past four and was dry in fifty minutes, which I wouldn't have believed in March.
That's five loads, all hung and dry before tea at 5:30, and more than half of what we wash in a normal week. The in-home display on the windowsill said we'd used 5.6 kWh of electricity by teatime, about £1.51, a good half of it the washing machine. I'm not going to claim I did anything clever. The sun did it.
The pegging habits that helped
- Shirts and polos go on upside down, pegged by the hem, so there are no peg marks on the shoulders and the weight pulls the creases out.
- One peg holds the corners of two things, so 48 pegs go a lot further than you'd think.
- Heavy, wet things (towels, duvet covers) on the outer lines where the air gets through. Small things on the inner ones.
- Trousers by the ankle, so the waistband, which holds the water, hangs in the air.
- Socks in pairs, so they come in already matched.
- A quarter turn of the line every so often, so the sunny side swaps.
The new pegs have made a difference. I'd forgotten how much of drying is just not losing things off the line. For the first time since March, nothing snapped.
What didn't go perfectly
Towels dry crisp on the line. Isla held one against her cheek at 10:05 and said, "It's like a biscuit." I shook every towel hard when I took it in and folded them while they were still warm, and that took the worst of it off. They are softer by Monday, though I haven't got a trick for that, and I'm not sure there is one.
At quarter past eleven a gust took Rob's work shorts over the fence into Jean's garden. She retrieved them with the handle of a garden rake and held them up at her back door like a flag. When Rob got home she told him that parcels were one thing, but she drew the line at taking in his shorts.
Alfie spent the afternoon in the paddling pool and went through three towels, which I squeezed onto the inner line in the gaps and didn't count as a load.
By 5:20 the last load was in, folded warm, and the basket by the stairs was empty for the first time since early March. Mabel was on the top towel before I had put the pile down.
