International Clothesline Week

Just in case you missed it, this is International Clothesline Week. It celebrates a free and easy way to dry clothes naturally, right in our own backyards. Clothesline protocol however has mostly passed out of existence and that might be a good thing. A mere 50 years ago neighbors knew a lot about one another and judged each other by the way the wash was presented. More than likely there were women better known for their manner of hanging clothes than their inability to cook. Unless it was a church potluck with cooking on display, the wash was much more “out there.” Extra sheets and towels meant the family had overnight company - but who was it? - whereas diapers announced the new baby faster than the grapevine. If anybody spotted a black bra.....that news traveled even faster. What would a body think about the goings-on in that house!

Monday was wash day. Anybody who didn't know that was pretty dense. Washing any other day meant that it better be hung in the basement or around the dining room so nobody knew what else was going on in that house. If sheets and pajamas were out during the week, neighbors would know someone was sick and come with chicken soup or a covered dish. How on earth could something so embarrassing such as washing clothes on the wrong day be explained?

Everybody knew that the whites were washed first, and that meant the lines had to be wiped off before the sheets and towels were hung. A dark line imprinted across dried items pointed to a woman cutting corners, or perhaps the teen-aged daughter who was sloughing off. Work clothes and overalls came last when the water was well used and wouldn't bleed the darker colors. Any woman who hung the dark wash first could have heard that news if she had time to pick up the party line.

Algoma Record 4/28/1911

Clothes were always hung by color, never haphazardly. Sheets were always on the outer lines thus guarding the unmentionables, though it was hard to understand why Grandpa’s woolen long johns were visible. He wore those woolen things winter and summer. They kept him warm in winter and he said they soaked up sweat in summer and kept him cool. Kids who ran around in shorts and sun tops never believed it.  For some reason long johns weren’t as unmentionable as other underwear, but perhaps by the 1950s, it was only the old coots who knew much about the things often called "union suits."

It was enough to hang the wash. Period. Grandmas and moms had other ideas. After all, a job not done well wasn’t worth doing and there was order in washing clothes, just as the picture frames were dusted before the furniture which was dusted before the floors were swept or vacuumed. Shirts and blouses were hung from the bottom at the side seams.  Hanging each piece of clothing individually was visually distracting, and ours – and all the aunts – attached one article to the next for a unified look. That didn’t work for socks which were hung by the toes,  or for  pants that were hung from the cuffs after the inseam was matched to the outer seam. Three handkerchiefs were hung together from a corner. In some wash line economy, the handkerchiefs hung in the little spaces left at the end of each line.

Most often clothespins were held in a little cloth bags which could be attached to the lines where they were easy to get and easy to put away. Some kept the clothespins in the wash basket but that meant more bending while trying to find the pins in all those pieces of clothing. Those with spring-latch clothespins often left them right on the line where they got rained on and dirty. That certainly saved a little work, but it was best to take an extra few minutes than provide fodder for somebody’s  table discussion at dinner, which was at 12 noon when every good house wife knew enough to have that wash off the line and ready for Tuesday’s ironing. Dryers relieved more stress than today’s anti-anxiety drugs!

Protocols differed throughout the country and, of course, women had to make do with what they had. Our pioneer ancestors spread wet clothing on bushes or lines that were strung from tree to tree and then taken down when the wash was dry. Lines sagging with the weight of sheets and work clothes were held up with clothesline poles placed in the middle of each line. Today, neighborhood covenants often prohibit clotheslines and outdoor drying, or allow retractable lines only. In a society where "green" is "in" and solar power is big, clotheslines are not.

Who knows? In years to come, National Clothesline Week could be a real celebration!

Sources: The ad is from Algoma Record and the photos and memories are the blogger's own. It was a Party-Line mention by WDOR radio host Eddy Allen that made me wonder if International Clothesline Week was for real. A simple Google search told me that it was indeed.