Homesteading in the Burbs – One Aspect of Prepping that Looks “Normal”

According to Wikipedia, homesteading is “a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve small-scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale.”

Self-sufficiency

It’s an important thing to consider when we’re talking about homesteading in the suburbs. People who live in the suburbs can be a lot more self-sufficient than most people give them credit for. If we work on having systems in place now, if we work on practicing each system now when things are easy, we’ll have a much easier time, if we have to put those systems into place to do what we can to keep a sense of normalcy about us if times get hard.

Homesteading in the Burbs is all about becoming the most self-sufficient that you can be where you are. In order to get underway, you have to Dream Big! Then set up a plan to help bring your dreams to pass.

There are many systems that can be put into place; but today, we’re going to tackle a system that the very vast majority of people around, city, country, or suburb alike can put into practice – a clothesline.

Now, don’t go bailing on me yet! Give a sec. I can see those cogs turning now. You’re thinking, “It’s just a clothesline. You don’t need a whole post about it, and I already know everything there is to know about a clothesline.” Give me a few paragraphs before you judge the post, and I think you will be as sufficiently surprised as I was when I was writing this post.

Why start with a clothesline?

I start here because it’s ‘normal.’ It’s an easy way to jump into being more self-sufficient without setting off the spouse or relative which might want to poo poo on your preparedness parade. Clotheslines can be easy to install if you purchase one where a holder is hammered into the ground and a pole is set inside that holder. Amazon has this one that would work well for people who don’t want a lot of fuss.

With our family all on board with preparedness and because we have a largish family (there are seven of us), we chose to purchase two poles, a clothesline, and two cinching devices. I’ll go through his steps later in the post.

Benefits of using a clotheslines

There are a TON of benefits to line drying your clothes. I’m going to start with two you probably didn’t realize. First off, the sun can actually sanitize your clothes! If you have musty smelling clothes, drying them on the line will freshen their scent because of the sun’s sanitizing properties.

More than that, when you dry your clothes on the line, the sun’s UV rays can actually damage the DNA of any bacteria or microorganisms. This will stop them from reproducing and effectively kill any ability these little buggers had to cause an illness. Win/win!

Probably the most obvious advantage to drying your clothes outside on a clothesline is that once your clothesline is in the ground, drying your clothes costs you zippo – nada – NOTHING! I will be the first one to tell you the money savings isn’t significant, but every little bit helps!

What’s the Best Reason to Use a Clothesline?

My favorite reason to use a clothesline is it can’t die on me because it gets filled up with lint. We purchased a brand new dryer two years ago. We’ve had someone out to fix it more than four times in the last two years. It’s such a frustrating situation when you have a family of seven. But we’ve already decided that drying on the line is the way we are going to go the vast majority of the time now that our clothesline is in the ground. Clotheslines provide such a simple way to dry those clothes. The best thing is if it needs to be fixed, I don’t have to call a repairman. So even if I needed to repair the line, the repair should cost me next to nothing if it cost anything at all.

Another wonderful thing about line drying your clothes is that they actually last longer! Who doesn’t want to keep their favorite pair of jeans or their favorite shirt around a bit longer? Why do they last longer? It’s really simple. When you line dry your clothes, they aren’t tumbling around in a metal container along with fifteen to thirty or more different items. They don’t brush up against everything else every second for an hour or an hour and a half.

Benefits to Your Clothes!

You get three benefits from this. Your clothes don’t stretch. This also means that no lint is produced. What is lint, but little bits of your clothes that are brushed off as a result of the friction between your garments that are in the dryer? Every time you put your clothes into the dryer, you are losing little pieces of your garments. If you line dry them, you won’t lose those bits of your clothes, keeping them looking better longer!

When you do use the dryer and the friction causes lint to build up, what do you do? Well, most people remove the lint after each load, but did you realize that lint builds up in other places besides just the lint filter? Lint can build up near the motor or even in the dryer vent. If the motor gets too hot because of this internal build-up of lint, it can cause a fire. So by drying your clothes on a clothesline, you could potentially be preventing fires in your house. AND you are saving yourself even more money by not having to have someone come out each year and clean your dryer vents! More money in the bank and less chance of damage to my house with one change. I’ll take it!

What About Winter?

Did you know that a clothesline will still work in winter? When I grew up outside of Erie, PA we lived about a mile from the lake, but my grandparents lived in Corry, PA about 45 minutes away. In the winter we would drive over to their house from time to time. And if you know anything about that part of Pennsylvania, there are a TON of Amish and old order Mennonites.

I distinctly remember several times in the winter when we were driving over to my grandparent’s house, we would see clothes hanging out on clotheslines. I asked my mother why people would hang clothes out in the winter. “They won’t dry; will they?”

“Have you ever heard of freezer burn?” she asked. I nodded. “Why do you think they call it freezer burn? The freezing dries out the food. The same thing happens with clothes that you hang outside in winter.” So when you hang clothes outside in winter, the cold weather will freeze the water in the clothes, and dry the clothes themselves out. Then before you bring the clothes inside, you simply give them a shake and the vast majority of the ice crystals will fall right to the ground.

Types of clotheslines

Indoor drying rack

While drying your clothes outside in the sun has more benefits, what do you do if it’s raining on a day when you want to do laundry? Having a backup indoor drying rack is helpful. This is the one that we have purchased. It has been helpful as we have had to wait over a month for our dryer to be fixed.

Retractable drying lines

These are great to have inside too. One side is affixed to one wall. A receptacle is placed on an opposite wall. When you want to use the clothesline, you simply pull it out of the first side, pull it across to the receptacle on the other side and insert it. This is also a great indoor option for rainy days.

Square Rotary Dryer Clothesline

This is a large square upside down umbrella-shaped clothesline pole. It’s a single pole. You set the holder into the ground and then slide the pole down into it. It’s easy for one person to set up and take down. It’s great for a single person or a small family.

Two Clothesline poles with clothesline strung between the two poles

This is the most complicated of the methods to get set up, but for a large family, it’s so worth it!

These are the steps that my wonderful husband took to set our poles into the ground.

Measure out the length that you want your clothesline. Mark the two places that you want your poles to be placed.
Dig a hole about 12 inches deep and wide in each spot you want to place your poles.
Empty a bag of pea gravel into the bottom of each hole. This helps keep everything level.
Set the pole into the hole and have someone hold it while you empty a partial bag of Quickcrete into the hole. Use water from a hose to wet the Quickcrete and stir it up as best as possible. Hold the pole perpendicular to the ground until the Quickcrete is set. This doesn’t take long.
Repeat for the other pole.
Give the two poles 24 hours to be completely set.
Fasten the end of the clothesline to one pole. String the clothesline between the two poles, going back and forth as needed.
Attach a cinch which will be able to tighten or loosen the clothesline as necessary.
Fasten the second end of the clothesline to the pole.
Hang out your clothes!

What About You?

Have you ever line dried your clothes? If so, do you love the smell or feel or does it drive you nuts? Do you have plans to install a clothesline in the future? I’d love to hear! Leave a comment below or if you got this in an e-mail, hit “Reply.”

Remember, knowledge isn’t just knowing something. It’s living it!

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