DRYING CLOTHES Bag for Clothespins. — The ordi nary wooden clothespins are the best. Keep clothespins for convenience in a bag made like a laundry bag of crash, linen, or other washable material, or use for this purpose a 24-pound flour sack. A wire hoop at the top of the clothespin bag is a convenience in keeping it open when clothespins are wanted.
To Preserve Clothespins.—Put the clothespin bag into a kettle of boiling water every few weeks. Remove after three to five minutes and spread the clothespins out to dry in the sun, or dry quickly near the fire. This keeps them from becoming brittle and crack ing.
Dip the heads of part of the clothes pins in dark paint, part in light paint, and leave the rest unpainted. Use the ones with dark heads for colored garments, those with light heads for miscellaneous pieces, as flannels, tow els, and the like, and the unpainted ones for sheer white garments. This will prevent using on sheer white pieces pins that have been stained by colored garments.
To Have Clothespins Handy.—Make an apron with a large haglike pocket to contain clothespins, to wear while hanging out the clothes.
Or put clothespins into a small bas ket (an ordinary grape basket is con venient), and hang the basket on the clothesline by a hook made of wire, such as is used to hold the basket by apple and berry pickers. Push the basket along as you hang the clothes. It is handy, and is also out of the way.
Or hang on each clothes post a bag made of oilcloth with a lapel. Attach a sufficient number of pins to the clothesline by pieces of strong cord about a foot long. Fish line is ex cellent for this purpose. Make a loop of the cord over the clothesline large enough to admit of it slipping along, and fasten the pins securely at the other end. After the clothes are taken down, the clothespins will remain sus pended from the line by the cords. Now shove them all along the line to the post, drop them into the bag without untying them, cover with the lapel, and leave them there for future use. But this plan necessi
tates leaving the clothesline out of doors.
Or set the clothes basket and clothespin bag on a child's four wheeled cart, or even a wheelbarrow, and push them along under the line as you proceed.
To Keep the Hands Warm.—Set the clothespin bag in tt kettle of boiling water. Remove and dry near the stove. The hot clothespins will help to keep the hands warm in freezing weather.
To Select and Preserve Clotheslines. —Gutta-percha clotheslines are much more satisfactory than rope. They can be left out of doors in all weathers, and wiped clean with a damp cloth. But clotheslines of rope will last lon ger and keep in better order if they are boiled in water for ei couple of hours when first purchased, and af terwards dipped in boiling water once a month.
They must be thoroughly dried by hanging them near the fire or stretch ing them on the clothes posts in the sunshine. Care must be taken not to allow them to kink.
To Wash Clotheslines. — A soiled line may be cleansed and made to look like new by boiling it in strong soapsuds. For this purpose make suds of a neutral white or yellow soap, but do not use soda in any form or wash ing powders containing free alkali. The line is so thick that the alkali may not all be rinsed out of it and hence will be likely to rot the fiber. Wind the line into a coil around the elbow, tie it securely at both ends, and put it in the boiling suds. If it is much soiled, change the water. Pour the last suds into the tub, place the coil of line on the washboard, and ap ply the suds with a scrubbing brush, scrubbing downward. Dry by stretch ing between clothes posts in the sun shine or indoors by the fire. Take care that the line is thoroughly dry before it is put away.
To Avoid Kinks in Clotheslines.— To prevent a clothesline from becom ing kinked or twisted when taken down, wind it toward you instead of from you. This tends to remove the kinkiness.