5 Things Hang-Drying My Laundry Taught Me

I Am Not the Best Homemaker.

That might be the understatement of the year.

I’m good at some things, I can throw together a fun activity in minutes. I will spend all day baking with my daughter just so she can have that special first bite of a cupcake she designed herself. And I am committed to creating a home everyone wants to come home to and be a part of.

But the dishes plague me daily. Laundry apparently does not neatly fold itself. And toilets exist.

You can’t win them all!

… Especially if the modern miracles we have today are broken. Like, super broken. Never gonna work again broken.

Like my dryer.

My dryer has been broken for nearly a month now. It’s a decade old and has served my family well. Sure, the latch on the door is a little wonky and I’ve been known to run the dryer several times on consecutive days before finally folding (this habit probably led to its early demise….) but it was my old trusty dryer!

Well, not so trusty any more I guess.

So, like responsible adults we’re waiting until Black Friday to purchase a new washer and dryer set because of all that extra “Disney money” we can save.

How have I survived you ask? I’ve been hang drying my laundry for nearly a month now. Have you ever hung laundry? It’s really time consuming… I’m mean REALLY time consuming! I’ve had a lot of time to think, and learn, and evaluate my current laundry situation (I mean a lot of time) and this is what I’ve come up with:

5 Things Hang-Drying My Laundry Taught Me:

• My laundry smells like the air outside. My entire life commercials that have taught me that we should aspire to have our sheets smell like they were hung dry. That might be true if you live in the country. I live in a crowded suburban city just outside of L.A. My back yard is the same size as my driveway and it backs up against a busy thoroughfare. So for the last month my clothes have smelled like dust and exhaust. Not good.

• Clothes do not hang dry soft… ESPECIALLY towels. Have you ever hung dry a towel? It’s like sand paper. Imagine that greeting you when get out of the shower!

• Kids apparently think that if the clothes are outside then they are toys. So running several loads in the wash AGAIN and hang drying them AGAIN is to be expected.

• Refusing to do the laundry and continually buying new clothes for your family is not a sustainable practice.

• When all else fails (and it did, several times) your neighbor’s dryer or the laundromat is your best friend. In fact, I’m sitting in my car as I write this with no less than 8 loads spinning around in those laundromat machines!

The lesson here is clear. We no longer live in a time where hang drying laundry is the only option and thank God for that! We ALSO live in a time where big box stores apparently begin Black Friday deals early so we’re buying our new laundry set today on November 15th! Life is good!

J/Marie

J Marie is a stay at home mom, artist and blogger based in the Los Angeles Suburbs. Follow her on Instagram for daily artwork updates!