Utility Bills

     When I was young and dumb, I'd watch my Mom take baskets of laundry outside on a sunny day and hang all our clothes on clothes-lines in our back yard to dry.  All the families undies, towels, sheets and so forth.  She'd carefully pin all the clothes up neatly, and in an organized fashion.  I was in my teens and thought it was soooooo embarrassing  "OMG all the neighbors are going to see our underpants drying on the line!!!"
 "How MORTIFYING for me!!"  Why did this crazy woman do all this when we have a perfectly good clothes dryer?

     Mom is a frugal gal, and doesn't like to waste money.  I didn't appreciate this until now, here I am in my late 40's and just opened up the electric bill and saw a $25 Savings!  WHOOP HEE!   You see my not so old electric clothes dryer timer went out last year.  I put the clothes in and it never shuts off.  Although I'm fully aware I have to manually stop the dryer I forget all the time.  Clothes would be drying for 4 hours. Then I started noticing my bill go up and realized it was that dumb dryer I keep forgetting to shut of.

       It was on a hot summer day over 100º when I go to throw some wet towels in the dryer, most of them used only once down at our community pool, then laundered.  It hit me, it's so hot outside why am I spending money and resources when I can line dry them like mom did?  I found some nylon cording, and tied it to two beams high up on my awning on the back deck out of the way but serves the purpose.  I found an indoor retractable line you can attach to a wall and string from wall to wall creating an indoor line as well for undies and delicate's.   All summer I dried my clothes outside, and because I like the fresh sent of bounce, when they were 90% dry, I'd stick them in the dryer with a fabric sheet for 5 minutes for that soft fresh smell I like.  My lines are much smaller than Mom's I just do my own clothes she did a family of eight.

    I save $25 a month off my bill that's $300 per year, and I'm being "green" which now-a-days is COOL!  I'm sure mom gets the same thrill when she sees how much she saves by using good old Mother Nature instead of an energy sucking electric dryer! I look back and say to my self, I was the idiot, I'm pretty sure nobody in the neighborhood gave 2 hoots about the clothes on the line in our backyard, and if they did, well....who the hell cares!