Clothesline Love!!!

I officially love my clothesline!  I got my electric bill recently and even though we were gone for 2 weeks to the fireworks tent and the boys were left to do their own laundry my bill was decreased by about a hundred dollars from last year in a similar month.  I'm sure the boys didn't use the clothesline to dry their laundry but I'm also sure they only did the bare minimum of laundry so the dryer probably didn't run very much.  Crazy boys, not wanting to hang their undies out for all to see!  :-) Anyway that $100 is a pretty significant difference in my book.  And while I'm saving the green I'm being environmentally responsible and reducing my family's carbon footprint.  But beyond the money-saving, going green thing I really just <3 a clothesline.  I love being outside in the morning hanging up clothes.  I love the way clothes smell when they are dried outside.  I love watching the clothes flap around in the breeze.

I grew up hanging clothes out to dry.  In fact, I grew up washing clothes in a wringer washer!  We had a well that ran dry on occasion so the wringer washer saved water.  Now I haven't had a clothesline for several years until earlier this summer.  I finally convinced hubby that I really would use one.  (I have been hanging a lot of clothes out on a rack for a couple of summers!)  He bought a few treated 4x4s and some line and eye screws and whalla! I have a clothesline.  He's a really good guy!  :)  (Now I'm trying to convince him to build me a couple of Square Foot Gardens!  This has involved a lot of batting of eyelashes and sweetness on my part! Such a chore to flirt and be sweet to that man!)

I have a pretty good system for the laundry but it has taken me a long time to get there.  Some might say that it took several chicks leaving the nest!  I freely admit that there are times when I have a mountain, and I truly mean "mountain", of laundry to do and fold.  That happens when we get really busy (remember my sons all played every sport available and that means a lot of practice and workout clothes!) but for the most part I can stay up with it.  The addition of the clothesline has adjusted how I do some things.  For instance, I would often put a load of laundry in at night and dry it in the morning, then fold and put away.  Sometimes I would forget or get busy and the laundry would sour.  YUCK!  (My sis-in-law says her husband can smell if she leaves his laundry in the washer for even an hour.  Thank goodness nobody has that good a nose in this family!)  But, of course, soured laundry always  necessitates a rewash and that costs time and money in extra water, energy to heat the water, and detergent.

While I have only had my lovely chothesline for a couple of monthes I have learned a few things through trial and error and through internet research.  Here are my tips to keeping the laundry caught up and ending up with clean, fresh smelling, soft, not stiff, line-dried clothes:

1.  Do a load a day just to keep the laundry monster at bay!

I wash in the morning and hang it out pretty quickly.  (This may have to change when school starts though.)  I leave it out on the line for most of the day generally, sometimes bringing it in just before supper time.  I have experimented with what to do when school starts but I think I will just have to work that out come August 10! If you have any ideas or experience in handling working full time and using a clothesline, leave me a comment with ideas or suggestions, please!

2.  Fluff on an air only cycle in your dryer for just a couple of minutes.

Folks complain that clothes dried on a line are stiff and rough but I found that if they are fluffed in the dryer for just a bit, literally a couple of minutes, they aren't nearly as rough and aren't really stiff at all.  I do this on the air only cycle.  If I'm doing two loads back to back I only fluff long enough to load the next load in the washer and get it started.  I give them a good 'snap' as a I take them out of the dryer to de-wrinkle a bit more.  I tried fluffing before hanging them out and after.  Before is definitely better!

3. Sort and stack as you remove the clothes from the dryer, t-shirts in one pile, shorts in another, undies in a third, etc.

As I take them out of the dryer I sort and stack them.  I stack as I plan to hang them, t-shirts with the hems together, undies with the waists all together, etc.  I also put each person's laundry together.  This saves time later when I am folding and sorting and putting away.

4.  Hang like things together.

They are already sorted so this is easy.  It also saves clothespins.  You can clip the corner of two towels together on the line and use only one clothespin.  It also saves time and bending.  If you have all of your washclothes stack together in your basket you can pick them all up at one time and hold one corner with one hand and pin them with the other hand saving yourself from bending over multiple times to pick up the next item.  This works with undies, t-shirts, towels, and washclothes and some other things.

5.  Hang things so that the heaviest part of the garment is down.

This helps pull out wrinkles as they dry.  For example, hang pants with the leg seams together and from the bottom of the legs.  For pants like jeans that take a long time to dry due to the bulk of fabric hang one pant leg from one line and one from the line next to the first.  (It looks hilarious but it works great!)

6. Use a clothespin apron.

Don't leave your pins on the line.  They get dirty and don't last as long.  You can buy or make an apron pretty easily  and inexpensively and it is so worth it to have one!

7.  Fold things as you take them off the line.

This saves you a ton of time.  And your clothes are already sorted so it's easy.  I do this if it's pretty outside.  If it's hotter than Hades.... I bring 'em in to fold!

Hope this helps any of you that are interested in saving some green and going green!  Leave me a comment or copy a link to facebook for me.  Thanks for reading.

Serving the Lover of my Soul,
Laurie Jo

Loss, Grief, and Comfort

Today, I'm struggling!  Specifically, I'm struggling with feelings of abandonment and loss.  Let me fill you in a bit.  I lost my best friend, Rita, just over 21 months ago.  She was my other soul-mate.  We shared so much life together.  Our husbands enjoy each other's company and are very close.  We have children that are very close in age.  We each had 5 sons.  We each adopted our youngest sons and we each "informally" adopted another son.  (No matter how we got them we love all of our boys.)  Our sons are each other's best friends.  My sons have grieved openly with hers.  We have all shared so many tears over these last two years.  So there is that gaping hole of loss in my my life.  Even though I know she is with the Lover of her soul and mine and I will see her again, I still miss her today and everyday.  I just love her so much and I can never use the past tense with her becuse I know she still loves me and is saving a place for me.  I can not imagine how one deals with this kind of hurt without the assurance of heaven.

That's one area of loss or abandonment.  My next one is that my nest is really close to empty.  You might be right in thinking that my tank is nearly on empty too! because I have nearly raised 5 boys!  Darling son #5 is a senior this year and will probably be joining the military and leaving home for good next summer.  I can barely write this sentence.  I haven't had him long enough.  I get anxious that I haven't done it right and I haven't been able to show him all that he really needs to know before he leaves the safety of the nest.  What if he crashes to the ground because I have missed showing him something really important or I didn't show it to him in the right way?  But most days, in my head (and in my heart) I am good with the empty nest.  Hubby and I still like each other a lot.   But today, for some reason,  my heart aches for more time with those babies and a house-full again.

What to do for my heartache?  Go shopping...well, that might work for a bit but not the long term.  Wallow in my heartache.... sometimes, but not for long, it hurts too much.  EAT!....  Ewww, I've done this one way too much!!  Call a girlfriend, I could but I can't think of anyone that's not working right now!  So.... get busy, that's what I'm doing.  I'm writing again and that is proving to be a good distraction even though I am very new to this blogging thing.  And then, I'm going to spend 15 minutes decluttering a paper pile!  (I HATE MAIL!) and then I'm on to painting the laundry room.  Pics may follow depending on how it turns out. ;-)

In the meantime the Lover of my soul gave me this:  He says He will never leave me and that he will give me comfort.

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. (John 14:18 KJV)

Thank you, Jesus!  I needed that! and You knew it before I did!  I love and serve an amazing God!  I hope you do too.

For the lover of my soul and yours,

Laurie Jo

Exhaustion and Hilarity

My sweet husband and I have been doing something a little weird for a few years now.  We sell fireworks... from a tent.... in a Walmart parking lot..... for FOURTEEN DAYS prior to the Fourth of July..... while living out of a cargo trailer!  This is completely out of our typical mode of operation.  For one thing, neither of us have any prior experience in retail or entreprenuership.  I am a high school biology teacher and he is a police officer.  I failed miserably at my only attempt at a home party business!!  Addtionally, I am NOT a camper!  My idea of "roughing it" is a hotel room instead of a condo!  But we have done this little venture for four years.  We do it under the umbrella of a charity because it's extra money in our pockets and it's extra money for our charity.  In all seriousness it has afforded us the opportunity to be generous when otherwise we couldn't have been.

We have learned of few things about ourselves and our marriage in this venture but one lesson has been blissful.

We actually enjoy each other's company.  (Now I will admit to you that this isn't really a new lesson; it's a review of an old lesson that we learned long ago.  But as a teacher I know how valuable reviews are to making knowledge stick.) I hve often said how much I enjoy being with my husband but truly it's kind of easy to say when you are only alone between 11:30 pm and 7:00 am!  (I know... some of you young mommies out there aren't alone even during these hours... Hang in there.  This too shall pass.)  But the cool thing about saying this after two weeks camping on a Walmart parking lot is that it really is true.  I know it's true because some days we are the only two people that we see that either of us even knows!  It is truer after 29 years of wedded bliss than it was in our courtship or during those honeymoon, pre-children years.  It's truer because of those years and because of the busy, helter-skelter, running-after-kids, going-to-four-or-five-ballgames-a-week years!  (Whew! makes me tired, and happy, just to remember those years!)  That's not to say that we didn't enjoy each other then, of course, we certainly did!  ;-) but it has only gotten better because now it's true even on a HOT, dry, dirty, stinky parking lot when we can't even seem to sell a sparkler!  Even when we are utterly exhausted from working from early in the morning until after midnight we still have fun just being together!  BTW, after reading this to Hubby he said that he thought maybe I was on a different parking lot that he was!!  He makes me laugh. :-D

 We can find hilarity in the weirdest circumstances.  (Granted this might be from sleep deprivation and exhaustion but still we find it!)  We can be happy doing some truly ordinary (read: boring) things like reading to each other from our favorite books or sometimes just reading our own books and holding hands.  (If you are picturing two tottering little old people I will reach through cyberspace and smack you!)  We find things to laugh about even if those things are completely beyond the understanding of anyone besides the two of us.  We have actually spent our last four anniversaries on a parking lot and my husband manages romance (YES! romance!) anyway!

Don't forget!  No matter the stage of marriage you are in right now do this: Enjoy your husband!  Make it fun to be together no matter the circumstances.  Be silly, be goofy, be spontaneous, be deliberate.  Plan for it sometimes.  Take the initiative and plan a fun date for him.  Be careful not to discourage him when he does something just for the fun of it, especially if it includes you.  Laugh at him, or rather laugh at his jokes and funnies!  I know that sometimes you think you are too busy for his goofiness, don't be. Everyone enjoys making someone they love laugh so let him make you laugh and try to make him laugh.    

For the Lover of my souls and yours,

Laurie Jo  

Some Summer Deliciousness!!!

This is not original to me and I wish I could credit where I found it but I have No Clue!!!  So I'm sorry in advance for stealing!

This is such a delicious summer drink!!!  You must try it!  I think this is better than Steak and Shake or Sonic's version.

Diet Cherry Limeade

1 2-l of a diet lemon-lime soda (like Sprite)
1 can of frozen limeade
Juice of two limes
Juice from a jar of Marchinio cherries (1/2 to full jar depending on your taste)
Cherries and sliced limes for garnish

Mix all this together and enjoy poured over crushed ice!!  It's so very good and rather pretty too!

As you know if you have checked this blog out at all I'm really new to this blogging thing.  I will try to post a pic of this deliciousness sometime.