Hanging clothes in windy weather

Some say that clothes smell and look better when dried with sunlight in the summer breeze.

I can certainly state that if you have to pay to use a dryer, it is much cheaper to use sunlight, and line dry. And really, it's not that much more work.

The only annoying part where we live is the wind: yes, it gets the clothes to dry faster, but it also gets them to fall off the line, and on the grass of our backyard.

If we had a normal rack to dry clothes, this would not be a big deal: humanity has long figured out how to get clothes not to fall off clothes racks. There are such mechanical devices like clothespins that can be easily purchased and used.

The tricky part in our case is that we have some sort of line going from one building to another that we use to hang clothes on. This line is exposed to the weather, gets dirty to the point it is really hard to clean, and we generally don't want to put our clothes directly on it. Instead, we use hangers.

line with clothes

This is where the wind comes into play: it's not that hard for the wind to knock off our clothes, and get them to the ground, and well, dirty.

The best solution we have found so far has been to use a rubber band. Let me explain how.

You start off with a simple hanger, like the one here:

clothes hanger

You then put a rubber band around it:

clothes hanger with rubber band

If the rubber band is too long, you make another loop:

clothes hanger with looping rubber band

Then you put the hanger on the line as usual:

clothes hanger on the line

And finally you use the rubber band to lock the hanger:

clothes hanger on the line

Once done, you can just unlock the rubber band and leave it in place, ready for the next time. With the rubber band closed, it is really hard for the wind to knock off the clothes! Victory!


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