Did You Know the Sun Sanitizes Your Clothes Naturally?
Its summer time so I have been doing a lot around the yard. Since I switched to cloth diapers, I’ve been doing a little bit more laundry. To offset this increase in energy use, my husband and I put up a clothes line the other day.
I really love getting out in the yard and laboring. My dad is a cabinet maker and my mom is a yard bunny so I grew up working around the house with at least one of them. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.
Anyway, we dug two holes adjacent to each other; about 20′ apart and 2′ deep (give or take a few inches). I reused two old metal clothes line poles that were left on our property and had my dad drill a few more holes in them. I held those steady in the ground while my husband, alternating between concrete and water, filled up the holes. We let the concrete cure for about 24 hours and ran metal wiring encased in plastic through the holes, tightening and securing them at the ends. I couldn’t wait to hang my first load of clothes. The sun is a natural bleaching agent so it is good for your clothes to dry in the sun from time to time; especially the little one’s diapers.
A note on laundering cloth diapers: do not use fabric softener as this reduces their absorbency. Dreft has softener agents in it as well. I use All Clear Free. It is biodegradable, dye free and perfume free. There are a lot of biodegradable laundry detergents out there now to choose from. I use All because it is the most inexpensive and it gets our clothes really clean. I don’t use softener on any of our laundry, it’s expensive, unnecessary, and its use puts more chemicals into the ground water supply. I haven’t used softener in years and don’t miss it at all. I urge you to try to wean yourself off if you haven’t already.
Now, back to my clothes line… I have been really surprised by how quickly a load of clothes dries in the sun; I do have my line in an area that gets full sun almost all day. Just to give you an example. My husband and I have a King Down Comforter. When I dry it in our dryer it has to be turned periodically and the dryer usually has to run through at least 2 cycles before the comforter is dry; this takes upwards of 2.5 hours.
I washed our comforter today and dried it in the sun on the line. It was dry and back on the bed in 4 hours with minimum energy use; plus it was bleached bright white again naturally by the sun.
My other favorite thing about the line is how it looks. There is a nice breeze blowing and I have sheets and a load of the baby’s diapers on the line right now. It conjures up an image that harkens back to a different time. It just makes me feel good to look at it. If you’ve got the space, put one up and don’t use your dryer all summer long!
