LINE DRYING LAUNDRY, plus laundry tips and systems that WORK

So today we're gonna talk about laundry laundry systems that work for big families line dried laundry and why we line dry and different methods of hanging up clothes and I'm gonna show you how we put together our laundry line and this laundry line was actually installed when we moved here over 20 years ago and we've done very little updating so I'll show you that and then I'm gonna try to answer some of the questions that I got over on my Instagram yesterday when I said that we are gonna do a video on line drying now the kids are a big part in our laundry process and today is going to be a rare 80 degrees October day in Iowa so I'm going to get a bunch of this laundry hung out really fast and then I'll come back and talk about some of the questions I'm only our laundry system is every Monday and every Friday but I had to substitute at school yesterday and I looked at the forecast and I saw that Tuesday was going to be just as pleasant of a day as Monday so we saved most of the laundry to do um today so the kids get up and they sort it um and then when they go off to school I finish hanging it out in the summertime when the kids are home they do 90 of the laundry on their own they get up and they sort it and they hang it out they bring it in and they fold it and put it away um under my supervision of course because if you have kids you know that nothing ever goes smoothly if there is not an adult available our laundry days are always Mondays and Fridays that's the system that we stick with and when it is laundry day the oldest child that is in the house which that varies from week to week depending on who has Barn chores that week the oldest child helps with sorting and turning things right side out and you know putting things on proper piles I have usually gotten up early like before six o'clock and thrown in a load of towels the towels are very easy to gather I just our bathrooms are both on the main floor so it's not hard for me to gather enough towels to start a load so that always goes in first and by the time I come in from the barn the washer's done and usually next I throw in a load of pants the reason I start with towels and pants is because those things take the longest to dry so hanging those out first assures me that those are going to be dry by the time I'm ready to bring all the laundry in our children help with laundry on different um levels the older children know exactly what I mean when I say hey I heard the washers done run switch the laundry the younger children I usually bring alongside of me and I say hey let's go you know switch the laundry and then I will kind of you know train them through it okay take everything out and show them how to start a new load so my washer is a super capacity Plus and here you'll see me using two scoops of soap and that is only because I'm washing the boys's school pants and some jeans and I know they were very dirty so that is why you see me using two scoops of detergent otherwise I often just use one the other thing that I do that saves me a lot of time is I always use the Speed Wash and the minimum amount of minutes for a Speed Wash is 15 minutes now I will use that for our bath towels I always just put them in for 15 minutes because they really aren't that dirty all the other laundry I put on Speed Wash and then I select heavy soil um and that'll give me 25 minutes of washing time and it uses hot water now I don't wash anything real fancy with hot water but most of our everyday clothes are just fine being washed in hot water and my mom and grandma when they use their Maytag ringer washer they wouldn't have dreamed of not using hot water for the dirty farm clothes thank you so our family is at our maximum with laundry this time of year and part of the reason well you can see and I'm still not done I'm waiting for two more loads to finish but part of the reason that we have so much laundry this time of year is our children attend a private Christian school and they wear uniforms and the weather's so nice and we still have lots of outside work around the homestead this time of year so when they come home from school they change clothes and their recesses are all outside and the kids are very active so each child has two sets of clothes per day because they change when they come home and those uniform uniform clothes um are already dirty and um cannot be worn another day so those are dirty and then they change clothes and they go outside and they work and play outside and those clothes are dirty now if I'm really on my toes as a mother I will look at them before they change at night and I'll say you know what those clothes aren't real dirty you can hang those up and wear them tomorrow when you come home from school but then I also have to be on my toes and be with that child after school the next day and say hey you're supposed to go get those dirty clothes so it's just a whole lot of laundry management um and as long as the weather's nice and we play outside and work outside after school we are going to have a ton of laundry so I'm drying outside really does save us money because I barely use the dryer as long as the weather's nice we dry outside and the other thing is my Monday and Friday laundry system I got that from my mother and laundry is a priority on those two days I plan nothing else or little else on those days and whatever I do plan fits around laundry like is it cheese making that fits around laundry because I can hang out laundry wow I wait for my cheese to come up to temperature um I normally stay at home those days if I have appointments I try to make them after lunch when the laundry's all on the line and then the kids all know that when it's laundry day laundry is a priority when they get up they have to bring their laundry down and sort it and then after school nothing else is done until we have folded the laundry and put it away now um the Sorting yes the kids sort the laundry but I almost always have to when I throw the laundry into the washer then I kind of resort it and I'm like oh wait this should go on this pile and this should go on this pile which isn't a big deal they do the best that they can and it's just my own um pickiness that makes me Resort it how do I sort laundry I sort laundry by degrees of dirtiness all the pants get washed together um all the shirts get washed together if they're if we've been doing something real dirty on the homestead and there's you know manure on some clothes those all get washed together and the other reason I sort them by degrees of dirtiness is because of the setting I use on my washer so if it's pants school pants that are all real dirty and have grass stains and I pre-treated them I'm going to use a heavy soil setting on my washer even though I'm using the Speed Wash setting which is like 15 minutes I'm going to select heavy soil which is more of 25 minutes and uses hotter water towels all get washed together and those I just do a simple Speed Wash and I don't always use soap because your towels that cherry cloth really you build up soap soap builds up in those fibers very quickly um so about twice a month maybe I use soap on my towels otherwise I don't because if you stop and think about it you were clean when you use the towel right so it shouldn't be filthy and that detergent just builds up and builds up and makes your towels stiff and crunchy when you hang them outside if we have a day that's not windy my towels are more stiff than on a windy or breezy day but number one thing if you have stiff and crunchy towels it's probably you have detergent or fabric softener buildup in those towels so strip them with vinegar using it depends on how big your load is but one-fourth a half cup of apple cider vinegar where you would normally put your detergent and then switch to a detergent that doesn't have Optical brighteners and fragrance those are the things that build up in your laundry in the fabric of your clothes now one of the reasons another reason that we dry outside is odor the sun and the outdoors get gets rid of odors and I personally very very much dislike scented laundry like to me it just feels icky against my skin probably knowing what I do about fragrances and how our bodies absorb those so drying outside gives you the purest of dried laundry because the sun smells so much better than any fragrance in my opinion anyway the sun helps get rid of stains um and it softens the laundry trying to think what else I think I'm gonna show you my method for hanging laundry and right here you can see how I double hang laundry like they're all sharing clothespins because I need only half the amount of clothespins when I do it that way and because today is going to be such a drying day with wind and almost 80 degrees I'm not worried at all about my laundry not drying now on dreary days when I'm worried about the laundry not drying I don't share clothespins so when I'm worried about the laundry not drying I do more like this and I do not share clothe pins I just hang them all up individually like those jeans right there because the more bulk you have under your clothespins the longer it's going to take to dry and you can see over on that line I did the same with the towels I they are all sharing clothespins because it's going to dry regardless now I'm gonna link my favorite clothes pens these here in Iowa we get tons and tons of wind and these are my favorite clothings because they will hold blankets and sheets in 20 and 30 mile an hour winds so I'm gonna link the my favorite clothespins and now I'm gonna show you my laundry line that has done so well for me for 20 years but let me warn you it is not beautiful it's very functional but it's not picture perfect because it's been here for 22 years okay so this is the pressure treated post and my husband used Quick Crete and dug holes and put them in the holes and you can tell that this clothes um this post has held its share of laundry but that's you could use a steel post a lot of people do but this is what um we probably had access to back then 20 years ago and this is what we used and this is the remnants of an old bird feeder up there reference for height on my laundry line post I am about five foot three so I'm guessing these are a little over six foot okay so then in each post we screwed in um an eye like a screw with a eye on it and then we fastened this plastic coated wire um to that and it looks like we've adjusted that and tightened it a couple times but I'm gonna link um most of what you see here if I can find it then here in the center post you can see that this one stands really straight that's because the lines just go through this one they're not attached to this one and that helps keep the lines from sagging so much um when I didn't have kids helping me with laundry I definitely had the lines more taut and they didn't sag so much but now with the kids helping I actually appreciate that they sag because the kids are able to reach the younger kids are able to reach um the laundry better and where it sags you just hang your taller stuff closer to the posts so that it doesn't hang onto the ground okay at this end this is what we have at this end then and these have been here for 20 years so they're very Rusty but we attached The Wire to this Loop and then you can turn this to make it tighter and here's a better idea of what that what that Loop looks like and here you can see and like I said it's nothing fancy okay a couple more questions one of the questions was um doesn't the sun fade your laundry and part of my laundry line is under a tree so in the summer when the sun is very clear and very hot I will hang the laundry that I don't want faded um here under the shade tree um like our really good clothes like church clothes things like that I might hang indoors if the Sun is really hot but also if you have a nice breezy day like this your laundry is dry long before the sun has time to bleach it and to be honest at least 70 percent of our clothes if not more especially in the summer in the summer ninety percent of our clothes are Farm clothes and clothes that we are wearing outside anyway and we're not going anywhere so if they're a little faded it doesn't matter school uniform shirts are probably the easiest faded um and I'll show you how I hang those to prevent fading number one it's either inside out or upside down and I'll show you in a minute I don't think I have any on the line yet but I'm going to hang some and then I'm going to show you how I hang those to prevent fading okay so here I have a whole row of uniform shirts and I'll often put them on the middle line because then they're not getting full sun and you can see how this one line Shades the upper part of the shirts and if anything is going to fade it'll be the bottoms because I've hung them up from the bottom and that gets tucked into their uniform pants anyway um the other reason I like to hang them up like this is the bulk of the collar and the sleeves if that can swing freely in the wind it's going to dry a lot faster than if it was bunched up here on the line the other thing I've noticed is that the cheap uniform shirts definitely fade faster than if you spend a little more so one of the questions was um soap nuts and if you're here from Instagram you know that on my laundry highlight I have information saved on using soap nuts and I've used soap nuts as my laundry detergent for probably the last four or five years and loved them um however when covet hit this price of Soap nuts just skyrocketed and it no longer felt worthwhile to me um to buy them because it was so expensive so I've since switched to the country save brand of um detergent and I will link that I get that from Azure standard and I'm really liking it it doesn't have any scent so that is always a plus for me because like I said I really dislike scented laundry so to the question about how to make laundry a priority and how to implement laundry days and so Mondays and Fridays was always laundry day when I was growing up and that laundry was a priority those days we didn't do anything until we had done our laundry chores um and I still remember [Music] um the days when my dad would get up early and he would make a fire to heat the water and Mom would use her Maytag ringer washer and we would do all the laundry and hang it on the line and because of the intensity of that chore back in those days when you had to heat your water and you you know had a much more hands-on experience with your laundry it had to take priority we couldn't just do a couple loads a day because it was such a huge thing to do laundry like you had to heat the water and then you had to stand there by the ringer washer you might as well do it all in one day if you've gone to those steps to get started with laundry so that is how my mother and my grandmother did their laundry when I was growing up so that caused them to have laundry days and I've just always kept that habit of having laundry Days Laundry Day days when laundry is the top priority and that by the end of that day we have it all put away into drawers and the beauty of it is we don't even have to think about laundry for the next four or five days so that is just our family's rhythm on laundry now today is Tuesday and because I was at school yesterday and didn't do laundry yesterday the kids are probably gonna forget that today is laundry day um because it's not our normal laundry day and they're going to come home from school and they're going to be like oh no I forgot we still have to do laundry but that's okay we'll get it all done and then we won't have to think about laundry again until Friday the other thing about having routine laundry days like twice a week whatever day it is is we don't have to have a ton of clothes um number one we live in an old farmhouse so closets are almost non-existing so each child has a cupboard and that's it two of the younger boys actually share a cupboard and then they also have rods where we hang up their school and church Club but being able doing laundry twice a week means that each child only needs five to seven days worth of clothes and if we don't do laundry on Mondays or Fridays by the next day or the day after children will be coming to me and saying mom I have no more socks or Mom I have no more underwear but that really helps us cut down on the amount of clothes that each child needs for a week and to be honest we don't have that much storage room for clothing anyway and yes your clothing wear out faster because you're washing them more and you're wearing them every week but that's okay most of our clothes are thrifted very few of them are brand new um and so we really don't spend that much on clothing the three younger boys can all wear the same size so that really simplifies things in their room but there's still three of them so if they still have you know five days worth of clothing that's still 15 shirts minimum that they need for school but that's how we manage how many clothing each person has and if their drawers are running over with clothes there's too many I I know that because I know that five days worth of clothing should fit into everybody's cupboard even seven days worth but then I go thrifting and I pick up a piece here and there and before I know it the cupboards are running over and that's when I start weeding through the laundry and being like well this shirt hasn't gotten clean in months so this one's now garbage and then that way we keep the drawers you know from running over however don't get me wrong there is many many days where I walk upstairs and I'm just like who lives here and where is your mother and let's get this room cleaned up um I'm gonna link my favorite stain removers but by and large the sunshine gets rid of more stains for me than almost anything else um if I have something like blood or mustard or something that I don't know if I can get out first thing I do is I put it in a bucket with some borax water and borax or washing soda works too and then before I wash it I take this bar of soap called hogwash and I rub that all over it I may even use a scrub brush if the fabric is pretty sturdy and brush the the soap in and then I throw it in the wash and like I said um most of our clothes are thrifted so if we wear them for a month which is that's wearing them four times and if I paid 250 for that shirt I'm not going to be crying over not being able to get a stain out um because that shirt we wore at two dollars and fifty cents worth in that month but most of the times I can get stains out pretty well one of the questions was do the dogs bother the laundry and when we had puppies we definitely have to train them to not bother the laundry but none of my adult dogs bother the laundry anymore they do love to rest in its shade another one of the questions was bird poop and bugs on our laundry um I think maybe in my 22 years of being a housewife and hanging laundry outside I can only remember like two or three times where I've gotten bird poop on laundry I mean look at all the room the birds have to fly the chances of them pooping on the laundry is very very slim um there has been times where I did not hang laundry out because we had an infestation of Asian Bean beetles and they would poop on the laundry and make it icky but that was one probably one month out of one year in my 22 years of hanging my laundry out to dry and sometimes if we have a wind still day um the Asian Bean beetles this time of year will sit on my laundry um but a from Shake gets them all off and you know if we bring some into the house I have plenty of little boys willing to squash bugs and throw them outside for me but it really has not been an issue for us bugs and bird poop not been an issue I had a lot of questions about winter laundry and I really think that I'm gonna do another YouTube video when temperatures are below freezing and just show you how I manage the family's laundry and yes I do use my dryer then I use it for maybe a load or two but um a question was how to justify the time it takes to hang out laundry and I actually really really enjoy hanging laundry on the line and when I'm not filming I can hang the whole family's laundry on the line in less than an hour I can do all of that in far less than an hour um because you know I do it twice a week and then it takes me probably 15 minutes to bring it all back in so there you have an hour and 15 minutes that it took to hang out probably I think that's five loads of laundry and it would have taken me about the same amount of time to throw it in the dryer and switch those five loads of laundry um you know by the time you get it out and put it back in it's probably a little less time but energy my energy was free the energy that the dryer takes to dry five loads of laundry that's a whole day of running my dryer for me so that's how I justify it plus it brings me so much joy to hang my laundry out over throwing it in the dryer and I'm here at home I have the time my time is free I don't have anything better to do than to save my family money and to protect them from toxins that's my job as a mother I love hanging out my laundry [Music] so another one of the questions was about dust from the gravel road now we live close enough to the gravel road that in the summertime I have to keep my certain windows closed because the dust comes into the house um but the chances of the wind being from the West on a laundry day and us having an an outrageous amount of traffic so that the dust comes onto the laundry um those chances are pretty slim so let's say the wind is from the West and I'm doing laundry that day we get very little traffic so the dust doesn't isn't usually an issue and yes there have been times when I'm like oh my goodness I need to go bring my laundry in because two things if it's so windy that the dust is coming all the way into the laundry um and you know just roll billowing in if it's that windy and that dry that it's that Dusty chances are my laundry is dry in a matter of an hour that laundry is probably dry so I can just go bring it in and protect it from all that dust one of the questions was how to get the kids involved in doing laundry [Music] um my best advice is if you make it a habit it will become their habit and if you make it a priority nobody gets to do anything fun until that laundry is done until that priority is checked off the list they all need clean clothes they all need to help um so with seven children here is one of the most common complaints that I get so the older ones right now the two older ones are 12 and 14. and they always complain that the younger ones aren't folding their share of laundry or doing their share of laundry and it's it's nothing new my two older daughters used to complain about my now 12 and 14 year old not doing their share of laundry so then when the children become 16 17 years old and they're rarely home on laundry days then they complain then the younger ones complain well why do I have to fold their laundry they're why aren't they here why can't we put theirs on a pile and I always say everybody does their share of laundry when you were little guess who folded your laundry your big siblings folded your laundry now they are big and they are working and away from home now you fold their laundry and then when you get a job guess who's gonna have to fold your laundry your little siblings so there's no room for a complaint we are a family we all work together and we do our share and yes there's times when you're doing more than your share but there was also times when you weren't able to do your share of the work or the laundry and others did it for you we're a family we all work together but don't for a minute think that they don't bicker about it because they do but I'm consistent nobody gets to complain um but they still do but I try to nip it in the bud and the best way to get a laundry system going is you have to make it a habit and to make it a habit you have to do something for at least 21 days before it becomes a habit so you know probably you're gonna have to do it for quite a number a month before it becomes a habit and it's second nature and it doesn't seem like it takes so much effort because it's now a habit habits and systems don't take near as much effort as when you don't have a system or a routine and one of the other questions was how to get caught up if you've fallen behind on laundry and to me for me when that has happened when we've gone on vacation or you know if I've been in the hospital and we haven't been able to keep up with laundry I make a whole day a laundry day where I use my dryer and the cloak line and I make laundry a priority for as many days as it takes until we have caught up but here again because we have such a finely tuned laundry system we actually cannot fall behind on laundry because people here run out of clothes like by day seven people are severely running out of clothes and somebody if I'm not able somebody's gonna volunteer to do the laundry so another one of the questions was how to implement a laundry system when you have babies and toddlers and number one I have to reach pretty far back in my memory to remember what it was like because um for the last 15 years I've had children that were old enough to watch the babies and toddlers while I hung out laundry but when I didn't when I just had free Scholars and babies um I clearly remember hanging out a load of laundry takes me five to ten minutes and running back to the house to check on the babies before I hang out another load um it's really not that hard I remember toddler standing at the door watching me hang out laundry and yes they were sometimes very unhappy because they weren't with me but as they grow older they learn there's nothing to be alarmed about I can still see Mom she's not run away and she's just hanging laundry but whenever possible they were with me doing laundry and I remember carrying my babies when they were sitting to and from the laundry room in the basket of laundry they sit there on the floor while you sort it they sit there when you throw it in you just take them with you it slows you down a little bit but you really don't have to wait for a free moment to do laundry you take the babies with you they sit on the floor while you change switch your laundry they sit right there with you when you're folding the laundry [Music] I definitely used my dryer a little more when I had babies um because it wasn't as easy to take them with me outside when the weather wasn't friendly but I always tried to hang out at least the pants and towels because that saved the dryer at least an hour of running foreign foreign foreign [Music] so then once we brought it all in everybody starts folding and Hadassah is not here she's at volleyball practice so it falls to all the boys to fold the laundry Harrison's job is to put all the school shirts on hangers and then he will move to putting all the pants on these hangers while his big brothers fold and put everything on the proper piles the kids kind of have their own system of whose file of laundry goes where and they stick to it everybody knows their system that's how we get it done is that right boys yeah you don't get it done because someone would be joining me every time someone has to be with me

Channel: Homesteading with the Zimmermans

Views: 57,198

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Id: CGG68wwP4Ys

Length: 38min 38sec (2318 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022