About a week ago the dryer broke.  It had been limping along for about a year.  The only thing I could surmise was that the drum had ripped a piece of metal off the holding part and it had been free flowing in the compartment that holds the drum to the machine.  It still worked fine but then it had begun to make a screech.  Ok so no laundry at 4AM, I would adjust.  I had noticed a month or so ago the metal had worn away which made the drum shift while it rotated.  I reached my finger up to see if it was malleable, it wasn't...however my finger was and I received a nice deep gash.  Sigh.   I noticed it was wearing away metal on the door.  No, I did not touch that.  Finally it refused to run which I suppose is a blessing because it is a gas dryer...that could explode....  "Woman explodes attempting to wash clothes...takes out entire town of Hamburg...News at 11."

The financial status of this household wore to the bone near the end of December (Merry Christmas kids) Although it's getting better, a $300 purchase was out of the question.  I could do the laundromat (because my schedule needs one more thing...)  Someone mentioned opening a credit card and paying if off - Um no.  Then I was talking to a girl at work and she told me when she was in college she rented a house and dried the clothes in the furnace room on a wooden dowel set up you could get at the store for around $15.  I imagined her in college... drying 2 JCrew sweaters and tiny panties.  Have I mentioned I average at least 10 loads a week?  But the seed had been planted...

I had the day off so I explored the furnace room in my townhouse.  Its quite large, but narrow.  Its a dry heat, there is a single light, but no way in hell would a $15 dowel crate work for this house, so I looked at what I did have.  A queen sized bed frame, two lawn chairs, 4 crutches (I have boys that play sports), two metal curtain rods, and a metal slatted night stand...

I rigged the bedframe to hold a curtain rod through the adjustment holes, I put a crutch between the two lawn chairs which I faced away from one another.  They are mesh chairs and their seats and suspension bars underneath offered prime drying for panties and socks.  The other storage room in my townhouse holds my prepper closet and the water softener - it is narrow and long as well.  I suspended the other 3 crutches and curtain rod between the prepper shelves and a pipe on the wall.  The slatted stand does well for flat-dry items.  The setups in both rooms could easily hold 2 loads of wash.  Crude, I know.  But I must be honest folks I patted myself on the back and felt like a genius.  (I'm half joking.  If I had been a genius I would've had an emergency fund to go out and buy a new machine - Did I mention I have a Spanish Textbook that cost $163??)  Seriously though, I felt like an MIT grad...in my own mind...

Then the real test came.  I washed everything and figured out it takes a good 24 hours to dry and the funny part is that the clothes smell cleaner for some reason - like the fabric softener smell doesn't get taken over by the super heated dryer.  The clothes aren't damaged - they aren't wearing away into lint.  And the odd thing is that I do a load of wash a day (2 if I'm off) and there's a weird peace to it now-  15 minutes, 4 short flights of steps, and they are hung and forgotten until around 5 AM the next day. It isn't really that much of an inconvenience.  In fact it isn't at all - I'm down in that room with the hum of the furnace and no one can find me...

True, I would rather be in a place where I have a darling of a clothes line taut between two massive oaks with the sun bleaching my sheets and the breeze puffing them like sails (I'll be more specific with my wish list next time as I've been saying for a while "I would love to have a laundry line"and never specified outside...on a farm...)  but it's been ok and (I can't believe I'm going to say this) I think I'm going to leave it like this for a while - lets face it, I'm the only one that does the wash anyway so I doubt anyone will notice and we could use the $ catch-up for a while

The only complaint from the kids has been that the towels are a bit rough...And yet somehow they find the courage to go on...Some comments you smile at and ignore.

I got my laundry line.

Ode to the simple things
Namaste