My experince with a retractable clothesline...

My husband is pretty tall.  When I first mentioned a clothesline, he said no.  He didn’t want to ‘clothesline’ himself on it while he was mowing the grass.  Then we found at 40 foot retractable clothesline from Household Essentials in our local Menards store (I’ve also seen it at True Value Hardware and Amazon.com).   With the help of my Mom we calculated that if we used it once a day for 2 months, it would pay for itself.  Why not try it out?  It was easy to install.  It was a little challenging finding a sunny, bird’s nest free, and 40 ft long spot in my back yard to hang it.  It’s fairly easy to use.  There is a spot where you double loop the line to keep it from becoming too slack that could use a little improvement.  The line is often so slack once I put clothes on it that my dog can’t walk under it.  I can hang an entire average sized laundry load on it if the line is stretched to its full length.  I’ve only been using it for about 5 weeks, so I can’t tell you how durable it is yet.  I do not know how I would replace the line inside the retractable casing when the line becomes damaged.  I think I would buy it on sale again for the $9.99 that I paid for it, but I don’t know if I would have paid the full $25 price.  

How to Make Your Own Liquid Laundry Soap

Need a project to use up all those little leftover pieces of soap? If you have sensitivities to fragrances or dyes you could use an unscented soap bar to make this laundry soap. It's a lot more cost effective than buying a fragrance free detergent. Just a little note though, I don't use this soap on my cloth diapers. It has a lot of borax in it and I'm concerned that it will harm the elastic.


Ingredients:
about 5 ounces of soap
1/4 cup Dawn dish-washing detergent
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
hot water
fragrance or essential oil of your choice, optional

Equipment:
2 quart covered saucepan
old liquid laundry detergent bottle
2 funnels

Directions:
1) You will need about 5 ounces of soap pieces. I leave this pan sitting out on the stove top and collect little pieces of soap until I have about 5 ounces. You could also grate up a larger piece of soap or a whole bar using a cheese grater. If I plan to use this laundry soap on whites, I make sure I'm using white or very lightly colored pieces of soap. I don't want to dye my husband's white dress shirts lavender with my laundry soap.

2) Completely cover the soap pieces with water. More water makes this process go faster but too much water and heat can make your soap bubble up into a foamy mixture.

3) Cover the pan and heat on low for 1-2 hours until all the soap pieces are completely dissolved. I usually check on it every 15 min. or so just to make sure it hasn't bubbled over.

4) When the soap is dissolved, pour the hot mixture into the laundry detergent bottle. I find a funnel very helpful.

5) Add 1/4 cup Dawn dish-washing liquid to the soap in the bottle. Normally I would use Original Dawn, but all I had on hand at the time was Ultra Dawn. I add the Dawn because my handmade soap contains moisturizing oils for my skin. My clothes do not need moisturizing so the Dawn helps to trap those extra oils.
6) I use a different funnel (that I made out of a piece of paper) for the dry ingredients. Pour 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of washing soda into the laundry detergent bottle.

7) Fill the bottle up with hot water from the tap. Using hot water is important to help the borax dissolve. Put the lid on and give it a good shake after filling to help in cooperate all ingredients. If I were going to add a fragrance or essential oil, I would do it here at the end. I think 1/2 ounce would be a good starting point to experiment with scent amounts.
8) I use 1/4-1/2 cup of this soap in my wash loads. I do give the bottle a little shake before every use just in case there are some undissolved ingredients.