Clothesline 2.0

With a growing mound of dirty clothes in my hamper, I was faced once again with the drudgery of doing laundry today. After the partial success I had with my makeshift clothesline a few weeks ago, I decided to make a second go at airing out my laundry. But this time around, I decided to create the next generation in clothesline technology. Instead of having just one very long rope extend all the way across the backyard, I decided to use several ropes of much shorter lengths so I didn't have the "sag" factor occurring in the middles of them. All I needed now was a cross beam to attach the ropes to, and I'd be set.

And I found what I was looking for in an old rotting broom sitting outside. I thought the broomstick would make an excellent cross beam, so I sawed off the head of the broom and used my Boy Scout ingenuity to lash the broomstick to the pole. The lashings weren't tight enough, though, and I soon had a flaccid broomstick on my hands. So I scrapped that idea and turned to Plan B: shove the broomstick into the loop at the top of the pole and hold it in place with a small wedge. I found a small triangular piece of wood to serve as my wedge, and after spending a few seconds shoving it into the loop, my broomstick was levitating parallel to the ground. Clothesline version 2.0 was looking promising.

I took the long length of rope and ran it back and forth between the broomstick and the old kiddie fort railing. Pretty soon, I had four clotheslines perfectly stretched out in the backyard. I then took my clothes, washed them using the Cold rinse cycle (which supposedly saves more energy), and then hung them out to dry on my new clotheslines. They worked perfectly. One factor I didn't stop to consider, however, was that it was going to be overcast all day with occasional showers. So after 6 hours out on the line, only half of my stuff actually dried. And then my broomstick... my wonderful parallel broomstick... started slumping as the weight of the clothes pulled it towards them. When I removed all the clothes from the line, they were all about to hit the bottom of the ground.

So, it looks like it's back to the drawing board for the clothesline. I think I better hire a structural engineer to help me when Clothesline 3.0 is released in a few weeks. But I'm getting closer. I can just smell it.