By the same token, does anyone worry about having loads of seeds and plants inside? My bedrooms and living room are currently stuffed with seed trays and seedlings in various states of growth. I've turned off various radiators, for various reasons, and am aware that all the growing is putting a fair bit of extra moisture into the air. I've got a little digital humidity checker and will see how things are in the rooms and after drying clothes inside.
If I could build this house again I'd have fitted a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery. Fresh, pre-warmed, dry air throughout the house. The house is timber frame so we have to be very careful about damp and end up living with the windows open as much as possible. I don't have a humidity checker but I can tell it's too damp when the house plants are thriving.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I can't use a line. On one side of the garden there is a rookery and on the other, fields where they feed. In between is my garden - they use the washing for target practice. I fought it for a bit and then gave up and got a tumble drier!
Hah! We cleverly located our washing line under the phone line where the swallows like to line up and chirrup before taking aim Really must move it......
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
We have a total of 3 although only one will be in place at a time. We have one under the car port for winter use; one on the patio used mainly in the spring when the grass is still wet and the third is half way down the garden, almost invisible from the house, and is used for the rest of the year. Whichever is in use generally stays in place all the time. The main exception is the one under the car port which is taken down over Christmas so any smoker visitors have somewhere to go. They ain't gonna smoke in the house!
Brings flashbacks of our house in Surrey, in the winter I had a laundry line strung around the downstairs bathroom AND the computer room, in addition to the cloths mule.. mainly due to a newborn in cloth diapers. It often took two or three days in winter for the laundry to completely dry.. and by then, there was another huge pile to wash. Then in the spring/summer/fall, it was the stress of always keeping one eye on the weather.. being ready to dash out at the first rain drops. Or else going into town on a nice day, only to see rain clouds on the horizon with my washing at home on the line.. and the mad dash to the bus stop to get home ASAP. Ha. I suppose the move to the high altitude arid desert of Utah does have some benefits.. my laundry dries in under two hours outside (and rarely a cloudy day, let alone rain), and in the winter about 15 hours hanging indoors is all it takes for even blue jeans. The laundry moisture in the air is especially welcome, as the humidity is extremely low in the winter.
Ours is strung between two telegraph pole posts, we didn't install it, but it does sit bang in the view. We also have indoor ones strung up in the boiler room, but to dry on them in the winter we have to have the dehumidifier running as well. And it drives me crazy trying to push through the washing to put more wood in the fire!
Straight across the lawn, side to side. A washing line post to raise it up when not in use. We take it down for parties as there are some tall males in our family. I also have a dryer as I like fluffy towels.
My rotary drier is tucked discretely behind trellis round the corner. But I do wish I had kept the old-fashioned washing lines that were here before. I removed 1 of the poles but the other two now have a tree growing between them so hopeless for washing! My friend has the best solution - a winter rotary just at the back door and in the summer that gets puts away and she uses the lines at the bottom of her garden which are out of sight. Now that I have a tumble drier, I tend to use that a lot in the winter.
'Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement' - Helen Keller
We are lucky as we have a quite a wide area at the side of the house at the bottom are the bins and woodshed and at the top is a retractable double clothes line that can only be seen from the kitchen window. I tumble dry in the winter though mainly because I hate going out in the really cold weather with damp washing.
Posts
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Now that I have a tumble drier, I tend to use that a lot in the winter.