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Welcome to the blog dedicated to hanging laundry. Visit here to take part in discussions about laundry hanging techniques, safety tips, "how-to" tutorials, pitfalls and pleasures. Share your clothing-hanging experiences, stories and insight. Amateurs and professionals - we'd like to hear from all of you.
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Nice blog! I am a completely devout Amish woman in upstate Pennsylvania (I generally only ever use a computer to check facebook updates on congregation meetings, and my neighbor does all the typing for me, lol). I am familiar with the drip technique of clothes drying, but after 30 years of doing laundry by hand, I have found that the French drying method of the 18th century is still superior. The French for a long time held onto the belief that water was bad for the health, so avoided bathing, their standard for cleanliness therefor was pure white linens, they focused much national energy on achieving "le belle blanc" as other countries innovated better bathing techniques. Parisian washerwomen would navigate rented boats halfway into the Seine by 7am daily wet and literally beat the dirt out of their linens. This took near 3 hours. They carefully stacked the clean clothes and brought them to shore. They discovered the best way to dry the clothes was to lay them perfectly flat and separate on the shore of the river for two hours then flip them, let them continue to dry for another two hours, repeat once more, then return the pristine garments to their patrons. This technique, which I choose to uphold, is the surest way to foil pesky mildew and to create a flat-pressed appearance. Suspending the clothes in the air puts undue stress toward the tops of clothes, lending to an awkward wear. Hanging clothes is fine when you don't have a riverside, but I would recommend either getting one or borrowing a neighbor's.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I appreciate your comments, I have to take exception to your allegation that "the French drying method of the 18th century is still superior".
ReplyDeleteI realize that this must have been a difficult post, and allow me to also thank your neighbor for helping with it.
Here, we are aficionados of HANGING laundry. While we are interested in hearing about other methods of drying, we find that hanging clothing on a line is efficient, hygienic and pleasant.
With all due respect, it seems that the "laying out" method has some inherent flaws. It is time-consuming, for one. Also, from your description, it seems that there could easily be a problem with crawling insects. Yes, clothing hung on the line can have issues with FLYING insects, but they are easier to deal with than the crawling kind. Perhaps the French had a good reason for abandoning the "laying out" method 300 years ago in favor of other methods of achieving "le belle blanc".
We may have to agree to disagree.