Ode on a clothes line.

I mentioned last blog that this farm lifestyle all stemmed from chickens.  And while most of it is a logical progression (Chickens to poop to compost to garden) the one thing that is hard to place is the clothes line. 

As a kid i was always opposed to the clothes line.  It makes your clothes stiff and it doesn't shrink them down a little so that they fit really nice and snug.  (am i the only person who appreciates that about a dryer? you know how your jeans fit differently when you first get them out of the dryer than they do on say their third wear? and yes i totally wear jeans three times without washing them as long as they aren't scuzzy.  I make no apologies.) Anywho i thought my mom was a whacko for making us use one.  Especially since we lived right next to a corn field and in the summer time bugs would land on our clothes and really gross me out. It was also no fun to sit out there pinning clothes to a line for what seemed like hours.  

But now that i have two kids of my own, I see the benefit of this activity.  

Don't get me wrong, my kids are adorable.  But most people think of my son and think of this:

Look at that face! What a sweet boy! Wouldn't you want to spend all day and all night hanging out with that kid? Totally.  The problem is i rarely see that kid.  Usually i get this guy:

Ya. Now you wanna hang out and hang up laundry for a few minutes don't you!?

You see the laundry line has perks well beyond the economic and ecological.  Louis CK does a joke about how the twenty seconds between the time you strap your kids into their car seats and the time you get into the driver seat is a "mini vacation".  

The laundry line is TOTALLY like that.  

Its quiet out there; the sun is shinning on you, the chickens are peeping in their coop, the cool laundry is fun to walk through just so that a damp shirt can run across your forehead.  Its all very very chill.  If the kids are super unpleasant you can take a few extra minutes to smooth out the wrinkles in a pair of jeans since you know you wont iron them later anyway.

No one will fault you for spending 10 minutes outside by yourself pinning clothes up, because it just has to be done.  And its good for the environment, and it saves money.  The list of benefits goes on and on, but more than any of them it affords a mini vacation from Screamzilla. Chalk this up as blog-documented reason #1 I am a horrible mother.

Yes, the clothes line might not directly follow from chickens, but it certainly does work its way into a laid back  farm lifestyle nicely.  When compared to the chaos of the inside of my house, the serenity of the clothes line seems almost heavenly.