Tips for building a really sturdy clothesline

A good, sturdy clothesline saves so much time and money, while a poorly-built one can be an endless source of frustration. Here are some tips for building a clothesline right the first time!

Over the years, I've had many, many different clotheslines. From store-bought swiveling contraptions to hastily-built flunkies. From lines strung between trees, to the sturdy structure I have now.

As I was joyfully hanging out a load of towels the other day, it hit me that having a great clothesline is one of those things that's easy to take for granted if you've got one, but can be a huge frustration if you don't.

For anyone who goes through lots of laundry, and wants (or needs) to dry their clothes without electricity, having a truly sturdy and well-built clothesline is a game-changer.

If you happen to have tree trunks spaced nicely, in a sunny location, it's hard to beat that for both sturdiness and old-timey esthetic. I once had a lovely situation like this at a beach house I rented during the off-season on Martha's Vineyard. My clothes smelled like sunshine and the sea, and drying laundry on the line was truly a pleasure.

For those of us not currently blessed with this magical tree-and-sunshine scenario though, I have some tips from my long and varied experience with clotheslines, for building a setup that truly saves time, money, and energy, and that's a joy to use.

Tips for building better clotheslines

1. Make it large enough

For this busy mother of two little mud monsters, that means having enough feet of line to handle at least two full loads of laundry at a time. Even in the fall and winter when we're not getting so dirty in the garden, I find it very helpful to be able to fit two full loads of laundry on the line.

Over the years, I've found that 40' per load of laundry is a pretty good rule of thumb. (Keep in mind that a load with twin sheets, for example, takes more space than a load of adult-sized pants or overalls.)

That means that for my family, a clothesline with end posts 20' apart, holding 4 lines spaced about 6" apart, works very well for drying up to two loads of laundry at a time.

Figuring on 40 feet of clothesline per load of laundry is a good rule of thumb.

2. Use heavy duty materials

Our clothesline is built using 4" square posts, and 2"x"4"s. You don't want to go any lighter than this. Keep in mind that there's going to be quite a lot of weight pulling on the lines between the arms of your clothesline.

3. Choose sturdy construction plans

There are MANY construction plans out there for clotheslines. I suggest opting for a style that uses a solid piece of wood to create the arms, fitted behind the vertical posts (like this one).

In my opinion, arms that are formed from separate pieces of wood and nailed to the sides of the vertical posts, simply are not as sturdy as those made from a single cross-beam anchored behind the vertical post.

I also feel that cross-beams nailed to the tops of the verticals are not as sturdy as those anchored behind them, since the main pressure the arms need to withstand is an inward pull, from the weight of clothing on the lines, rather than a downward one.

4. Treat the wood for longevity.

To help reduce decomposition of the wood, I chose to paint my clothesline, including the full length of the timbers below the soil line. Building the whole clothesline with pressure treated or composite wood would be another option.

In recent years, there's also been a resurgence among online homesteading groups in the recommendation of charring as a way of treating the portions of the posts that will be underground. Interestingly though, most studies have shown charring to actually reduce the longevity of the subterranean wood, rather than having the desired effect.

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This little guy was SO proud to freshen up the clothesline with a new coat of paint.

5. Sink the posts deep, and use concrete

Keep in mind that I dish out this advice as someone who lives in Maine, where the ground undergoes extreme freeze and thaw cycles every year.

In dryer, warmer climates, securing clothesline posts with concrete may not be so necessary. But here in Maine, where the ground freezes, thaws, and gets pretty saturated with water every spring, it's an absolute necessity.

Use 10' vertical beams, so that you can sink 3-4' of that depth under ground. Your clothesline is going to withstand much more pressure than pretty much any fence, so don't sink it less deeply than you would a primary fence post.

I recommend also using a full bag of fast-setting Quickrete to strongly set each post. The relatively small investment of time and money that goes into setting the posts with concrete will prove more than worthwhile when you have a sturdy, two-loads-of-laundry clothesline that doesn't need to be "firmed up" every spring. This step is not one to skip.

6. Choose a sunny location if you possibly can

Not everyone has a sunny property, and sometimes there's just nothing you can do about that. I also understand that you might not want to give precious sunny space over to laundry, if much of your lot is shaded.

That said, clothing just dries faster in the sun. It also has a bleaching effect on laundry, which is something I appreciate since I'm terribly allergic to actual bleach.

If drying laundry as quickly as possible is a goal, aim for placing your clothesline in an area that gets at least partial sun in the middle of each day.

7. String your clotheslines as high as you can comfortably reach

I've found it really helpful to string my lines as high as I can reach without strain. Even well-tautened clothesline is going to stretch and sag a little bit with the weight of laundry. You want to be able to dry your sheets without having to fold them up more than once.

Pants dry faster if they're hung from the hem or waistband, than if they have to be folded over so they won't touch the ground.

Having a line as high as you can comfortably reach, is a good strategy for helping your laundry to dry as quickly as possible.

Some common clothesline questions

Do clotheslines really save money?

When I exclusively use a clothesline and not an electric dryer for drying our clothing, I estimate that it saves about $40 per month on our electric bill.

I would have to put a meter on my dryer (and I don't currently have a working dryer), to come up with an accurate and exact number.

BUT, I can say this. In the 7 years I've been living on our homestead, more than 14 months of that time have been spent without a dryer, and I pay very close attention to our electric usage--so that estimate is a pretty good one.

It is clothesline or clothes line?

Is clothesline one word or two? In the United States, it's generally spelled as one word: clothesline. Most English language dictionaries list it this way. An exception to this is the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists it as two words: clothes line. It seems that the two word usage may be more common in the UK, while the single word spelling is otherwise standard.

Is cotton, PVC, or vinyl clothesline best?

In my opinion, the vinyl-coated wire or PVC options are best for clotheslines. If you regularly hang heavy items, and it's important that your clothesline stretch as little as possible, the vinyl-coated wire would be your best bet.

For longevity, I prefer the regular white PVC clothesline. I find that it lasts for many years, doesn't stretch excessively, and (most importantly to me) doesn't harbor bugs' eggs, mold or mildew, like cotton clotheslines.

What type of clothes pins are the best?

When it comes to clothespins, you can choose from plastic, metal, or wood, and they come in quite a variety of styles.

Personally, I like using wooden spring-style clothespins. Some are much, much better than others. I haven't been able to justify buying some of the really expensive clothespins out there, though I can understand why folks would.

As a rule, the inexpensive wooden clothespins I've bought at the hardware store or feed store always tend to have pretty wimpy springs, and don't grip clothing as securely as I'd like.

I recently bought this 200 pack of wooden clothespins, and they have springs that are noticeably stronger than any others I've bought in recent years. As long as they don't change manufacturers, these are a good and economical choice, in my opinion.

Those are my best tips for creating a good, high-use, clothesline setup. After many years of using many different types of clotheslines, I've become pretty opinionated about them, as you can tell!

I hope these tips serve you well! If you also have strong opinions about clotheslines and have tips you'd like to share, please feel free to add them in the comments below. Questions I haven't answered? Drop those in the comments too, and I'll try to help!

Device for hanging and drying laundry

Clothes lines located on the islet of Hooge in northern Germany. Clothes lines located in Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

A clothes line, also spelt clothesline and also known as a washing line, is a device for hanging clothes on for the purpose of drying them. It is any type of rope, cord, or twine that has been stretched between two points (e.g. two sticks), outside or indoors, above the level of the ground. Clothing that has recently been washed is hung along the line to dry, using clothes pegs or clothespins. Washing lines are attached either from a post or a wall, and are frequently located in back gardens, or on balconies. Longer washing lines often have props holding up sections in the middle due to the weight of the usually wet clothing.

More elaborate rotary washing lines save space and are typically retractable and square or triangular in shape, with multiple lines being used (such as the Hills Hoist from Australia). Some can be folded up when not in use. The notable con man Steve Comisar once sold a solar powered clothes dryer advertised in national magazines as a scientifically proven, space age method of drying clothes using only the power of the sun. Customers received a length of clothesline. In Scotland, many tenement buildings have a "drying green", which is a communal area predominantly used for clothes lines – it may also be used as a recreational space - as well as a clothes horse connected to a pulley system inside which can be used in the frequently cold winter weather.

Comparison with clothes dryer

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A rotary, or Hills Hoist, type of clothes line

Both clothes lines and clothes dryers serve the same purpose: drying clothes that have been recently washed, or that are wet in general. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of using a clothes line instead of a mechanical dryer:

Advantages

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• Saves money.[1][2]
• Zero greenhouse gas emissions per load[1][2] (2 kg CO2eq of greenhouse gas emissions from the average mechanical clothes dryer per load).[3]
• Less fabric wear and tear.[2]
• Laundry items do not shrink (hot air from a mechanical clothes dryer may shrink items).
• No static cling and no perfume smells throughout the neighborhood from fabric softener and anti-static dryer sheets.
• Laundry items stay softer to the touch (mechanical clothes dryers tend to remove short, soft, fine fibers), and may be less wrinkled.
• Laundry items often do not need ironing if line dried in a breeze.
• Avoids the potential of airborne lint and reduced air quality.
• Eliminates the noise from a mechanical clothes dryer.
• Does not vent indoor air to the outside and waste the large volume of conditioned (heated or cooled) air that a mechanical dryer's blower does.
• For a simple line drying arrangement (rope and clothes pins) the repair and replacement costs are about $20.00 per 1,000 loads of laundry or 2 cents per load. For non-commercial mechanical clothes drying the repair and replacement costs (including labor expenses) are about $200.00 per 1,000 loads of laundry or 20 cents per load.

Disadvantages

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• Putting laundry on a line usually takes more time than putting it into a mechanical dryer (as laundry items have to be hung up and fixed one by one).
• Laundry items need to be hung indoors during rainy weather, or may get wet if the weather changes.
• Neighbors may find it aesthetically unpleasant.[1]
• Exposing laundry can lessen privacy, showing information about inhabitants' living habits.
• There may be a risk of theft or vandalism of clothes depending on where the clothes are hung.
• Environmental contaminants such as soil, dust, smoke, automotive or industrial pollutants, pollen and bird and animal droppings can come in contact with clothing.
• Clothespins can leave imprints on the clothes.
• The line presents a hazard to pedestrians, depending on line mounting height, pedestrian height, and lighting conditions.

Drying laundry indoors

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Clothes drying indoors

Laundry may be dried indoors rather than outdoors for a variety of reasons including:

• inclement weather
• physical disability
• lack of space for a line
• reduce the damage to fabrics from sun's UV rays
• legal restrictions[4]
• to raise the humidity level indoors, and lower the air temperature indoors
• convenience
• to preserve privacy and as a safeguard against vandalism

Several types of devices are available for indoor drying. A clotheshorse can help save space in an apartment, or clothes lines can be strung in the basement during the winter. Small loads can simply be draped over furniture or a shower curtain pole. The drying time indoors will typically be longer than outdoor drying because of the lack of direct solar radiation and the convective assistance of the wind.

The evaporation of the moisture from the clothes will cool the indoor air and increase the humidity level, which may or may not be desirable. In cold, dry weather, moderate increases in humidity make most people feel more comfortable. In warm weather, increased humidity makes most people feel even hotter. Increased humidity can also increase growth of fungi, which can cause health problems.

An average-sized wash load will convert approximately 4965 kilojoules of ambient heat into latent heat that is stored in the evaporated water, as follows. A typical 4 kg load of laundry can contain 2.2 kg of water, after being spun in a laundry machine.[5] To determine how much heat has been converted in drying a load of laundry, weigh the clothes when they are wet and then again after the clothes have dried. The difference is the weight of the water that was evaporated from them. Multiply that weight in kg by 2,257 kJ/kg,[6] which is the heat of vaporization per kilogram, to obtain the number of kilojoules that went into evaporating the water, or multiply by 0.6250 kWh/kg to get kilowatt-hours. If the moisture later condenses inside the house, the latent heat will return to ambient heat which could increase the temperature of the air in the room slightly.[7] To obtain a good approximation of the effect this would have in a particular situation, the process can be traced on a psychrometric chart.

Factors that determine the drying duration

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Various factors determine the duration of drying and can help to decide rather to use a drier or a clothes line

• Placement of clothes line
• The environmental temperature - increase of temperature decreases the drying duration
• The environmental humidity - decrease of humidity will decrease the drying duration
• Wind velocity - Sometimes people put a fan near the clothes when drying them indoors
• Direct sun - usually only the external line will be exposed to direct sun, so usually people put the thickest clothes on the most external line.
• Cloth thickness

Drying laundry in freezing conditions

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Laundry may be dried outdoors when the temperature is well below the freezing point. First, the moisture in the laundry items will freeze and the clothing will become stiff. Then the frost on the clothes will sublimate into the air, leaving the items dry. It takes a long time and it is usually much quicker to dry them indoors, but indoor drying transfers heat from the air to water vapor, so it is a trade-off between speed and energy efficiency. The added humidity cancels out the reduction in air temperature to some extent.

North American controversy

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Controversy surrounding the use of clothes lines has prompted many governments to pass "right-to-dry" laws allowing their use.[1] According to Ian Urbina, a reporter for The New York Times, "the majority of the 60 million people who now live in the country’s [The United States'] roughly 300,000 private communities" are forbidden from using outdoor clothes lines.[8]

As of August 2013 , the states of Florida, Colorado,[9][10][11] Hawaii,[12] Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin had passed laws forbidding bans on clothes lines, while Utah allows local jurisdictions to forbid such bans.[13] At least eight states restrict homeowners' associations from forbidding the installation of solar-energy systems, and lawyers have debated whether or not those laws might apply to clothes lines. British filmmaker, Steven Lake, released a documentary in 2011 titled Drying for Freedom about the clothes-line controversy in the United States.[8][14]

In Canada, the province of Nova Scotia's first NDP government passed An Act to Prevent Prohibitions on the Use of Clotheslines on December 10, 2010 to allow all homeowners in the province to use clotheslines, regardless of restrictive covenants.[15] The province of Ontario lifted bans on clothes lines in 2008.[16] Some affluent Canadian suburban municipalities such as Hampstead, Québec or Outremont, Québec prohibit clotheslines.[citation needed]

Gallery

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Further reading

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See also

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References

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