How Dry I Am (Or the Laundry Is, Anyway)

Our electric clothes dryer bit the big one a few weeks ago. Yeah, it never rains but it pours at Casa de Crazy, and old Aunt Entropy decided to remind me that she's boss, I'm her bitch, and I better mind her or she'll smack me around some more. Sigh. I love you, Aunt Entropy...

So the dryer went caput...quietly, without a hum, a buzz, a fizzle, a pop, or a wisp of smoke. It just...didn't dry. We think maybe a new heating element will right the poor thing, but given our current economic status, that'll be a while in coming.

Luckily, last year Someone installed a solar dryer for me. Yay, Someone!! I've been wanting one for a long while, and he obliged.

A solar dryer, for those not in the know, is also known as a bit of rope and some trees or posts. You know, a clothes line?

Even my better-than-well-off grandparents had one when I was a kid. We dried sheets on them, mostly, especially in the summer time.

Ours has been somewhat patchy in use - after all, a solar dryer can only work when there's sun. With no Internet and no television, and no radio reception in the house (I'd give just about anything for an old-fashioned transistor radio in the kitchen), we don't get a weather report unless we call a friend or family and ask for one, so I have to look out the window in the morning and determine if I think it's a laundry day.

I can get four or five loads washed and dried on a good day - the solar dryer is faster than the electric one, hands down (when it's working, that is). It's been quite warm and sunny lately, rather spring-like, so I've been doing laundry like mad and hoping for no sudden onset precipitation.

I like the way clothes and linens smell when they've been dried on the line. Sometimes they're a little stiff and raspy, but I don't mind. The only things that really want drying in a machine are Someone's socks. Socks dried on the line are not so comfortable - so socks come with me to Mum's once a week for a run through the machines. I'd use a laundromat, but Mum's machines don't demand quarters...

Luckily, Someone has lots of socks, so he doesn't have to recycle dirty ones or go without. I never knew anyone so fanatical about his socks!

When the sun is not obliging and I simply MUST have something washed, we hang it over the Evil Genius's shower rod and turn a fan on it to dry. Not exactly optimal, but it works in a pinch.

Things will get back to what passes for normal around our place one of these days...but in the meantime, we'll muddle through somehow, just like we always do. It's not so bad...except for desperately missing the Blue Nowhere and you folks, that is...