It’s true, every road in Atlanta has Peachtree in the name.
Driving past Gaffney’s giant peach on the way in from South Carolina sets the mood for what fruit grows best here if Google maps doesn’t quite do it.
Sweet tea and sweet Georgia peaches say sweet dreams on Peachtree street tonight.
Now your clothesline needs a clothespin bag.
Search Amazon or Etsy to do it up right with an attractive vintage-looking one like my mom had, or make one yourself for free in a few minutes.
Materials Needed:
1. Plastic mesh vegetable sack used for onions or potatoes
2. Wire coat hanger (I took the trouser wire off a broken fancy wooden suit hanger)
3. Wire cutters and/or wire snips
See the photoset above for the basic idea and cruise internet pictures of clothespin bags if you’ve never seen a clothespin bag.
A Few Notes:
1. Before assembling, test that the mesh of your bag isn’t so big that clothespins fall through. If you are going to the grocery store to buy produce for the bag, take a clothespin with you to check.
2. You don’t have to weave every hole of the mesh through the coat hanger, you can skip a few holes between weave points.
3. If you have a really deep mesh bag but don’t want a really deep clothespin bag, customize your depth by cutting some off the top before weaving it onto the coat hanger.
4. A nice perk to the plastic mesh bag – it doesn’t hold water at all and it dries super fast after a rain. If your clothespins live outside in the bag, they’ll dry quickly, too.
5. I’ve used mine for about a week and love it. The only small drawback is the clothespins can get a little caught in the mesh as I take them out. Given my bag took very little tools/time/skill/materials to assemble, and it looks cute, I’m OK with it taking an an occasional extra half-second to grab them from the bag.
Whether you’re hanging laundry outside to show off your cute linens or to save the planet, you’re in it to win it with a totally reclaimed clothespin bag.
Airing out your laundry isn’t just for TMZ. Drying in the sun brings benefits other than saving electricity. There’s a knack to it, but like all things done for millenia but abandoned for progress, the internet can tell you how to do it.
Staking out a sunny spot to dry your wash can be easy if you happen to have existing structures to support your clothesline. For city dwellers, especially in the Mid Atlantic and Northeast where back yards are narrow and often bordered by high wooden fences, take a look around for a pair of potential clothesline anchors. Consider between the corner of a tall deck and the fence, between a pair of opposing windows with sturdy iron security bars or between a pair of tall iron staircases such as we have.
Wet clothes are heavy, so your clothesline supports need to be secure. Don’t bother tying it to that rickety wooden fence post that sways when you lean on it. If you live in a condo or a neighborhood with an association, check the bylaws before you buy your clothespins, clotheslines can be considered shabby and may not be allowed.
For the industrious, a few ideas for building a traditional clothesline from scratch are here, here, and here.
See the photoset above for a simple take-it-down-at-will clothesline for a busy apartment building back yard.
A Few Notes:
1. Our single line hangs a set of sheets or about a half-load of laundry (from our less-than-full-sized washer), which is fine. I’m not doing this to unplug the dryer for good, I don’t want to inflict our underpants on our apartment building.
2. I used a turnbuckle I picked up for cheap to make the clothesline easily detachable. In theory, I can take up the line slack with it but it’s tiny and have much of an impact. Any kind of sturdy carabiner or clip will work.
3. To secure the clothesline to the staircase, I wrapped the line multiple times then tied a square knot. I used two half hitches to knot the line to the turnbuckle.
4. Give your laundry a shake as you take it down to knock off any hitchhiking bugs.
5. You do need clothes pins. It may drape heavily as you hang it but laundry lightens as it dries – a slight breeze will send your favorite tee off to the dirty corner of the yard (or alley). Thankfully, hardware stores, drug stores, dollar stores and Target sell clothes pins.
6. A laundry basket rules, but if you’re short on space, a clean reusable shopping bag or two works well. It gets damp from the wet laundry but you can clothespin it to the line inside-out and upside down (pinning the bottom to the line so it doesn’t catch wind like a sail and blow away). It’ll be dry before your laundry is. (For large capacity, there’s always the mega-useful Ikea bag.)
String one up and soon you’ll be singing to your clothes out on the party line.
This post is #3 in a 5-part series. Thanks to the great folks at Gorilla Glue, The Soil Toil has 5 Gorilla Glue Prize Packs to give away! What’s included in the Prize Pack and how to enter to win is all detailed here.
To enter to win, simply leave a comment on this post. A winner was randomly selected on June 15th at 8 am. However, you can still share what project you have in need of Gorilla Wood Glue or testify to Gorilla Tough awesomeness by telling of projects completed with Gorilla Glue products. The winner from today’s post will be randomly selected Friday June 15th, 2012, and announced at 8:00 am EST has already been chosen.
If you blog, tweet, pin, tumblr, Facebook, G+ or StumbleUpon, feel free to leave your site or social media handle in your comment and share the Gorilla Glue contest throughout your networks.
This Gorilla Wood Glue project fills two needs for our back yard garden: one more tomato plant stand and one more place to sit.
The chairs came from our neighbor friends – they set them out in their front yard, bound for the curb. The chairs looked pretty pathetic, both were coming apart at the seat slats, but one was quite bad. They chuckled as I asked to have the chairs. Armed with only a bottle of Gorilla Wood Glue and a rag, it became my mission to reclaim these chairs without tools.
Click the pictures above to view the dual chair repair.
A Few Notes:
1. Check for fit by fitting the pieces to be glued together before applying any glue.
2. A proper treatment would have been to take the chairs apart, glue inside the slots where the slats fit, and reconstruct the chairs. I did not do that.
3. It’s not shown in the pictures, but I used my foot to gently but firmly bang each chair frame to re-seat the slats. My rubber mallet would have been ideal but my foot worked well.
4. Also not shown, I rested the chairs against a wall and set a brick on top in lieu of clamping.
5. I did not wipe excess glue from around the slats.
6. Read the bottle’s full instructions before using.
I am not a woodworker and this isn’t a woodworking project. I reclaimed one chair to sit a tomato pot on and another chair to sit people on. I am quite pleased with how they turned out. After reading comments on Gorilla Wood Glue’s tough nature, I suspect the chairs will break from old age before the glue bonds fail.
To learn more about Gorilla Wood Glue and their other products, visit their Facebook page. You’ll also find incredible user-completed projects, safety tips and a handy Gorilla Glue Guide for navigating your own projects.
Leave a comment below for your chance to win a Gorilla Glue Prize Pack! to share your Gorilla Glue stories, but a winner has been chosen for this post. Thanks!
Our back yard table came to us through craigslist five or six years ago, our apartment neighbor who tended the yard before me picked it up.
Green, plastic and used for everything – it’s fading and drying out in the sun. Something greasy settled into it a few weeks ago and I set out to clean it with dish soap today.
After scrubbing it, rubbing it and hosing it down, the largest grease spot that inspired this industrious cleaning was no longer greasy and became the best-looking swath on the old table top.
Ah ha!
I ran upstairs and grabbed the canola oil.
How To Restore Plastic Outdoor Furniture with Oil
1. Own or inherit worn-out and weathered plastic patio furniture.
2. Hose it down and dry it off.
3. Rub it down with mineral oil (preferred) or canola oil (long-term results unknown but it looks good now).
4. Let it soak in (I let it set in the sun for an hour).
5. Thriftyfun.com doesn’t wash off the mineral oil but I washed away the canola oil with a soapy rag and water.
6. Enjoy your slightly-better-looking plastic furniture!
Oh my gosh. Our weather-beaten plastic table looks five years younger.
Well, except for the wax stains, glue drips and cat scratches. I’m quite pleased.
