Adventures in Crazy Homemaking

There was a time when I was a child when we couldn't afford a clothes dryer. When winter approached, my parents hung rope back and forth through the basement. I remember my brother and his friends playing Axis and Allies at a card table in between the dangling clothes. I'm not sure I'd want to hang clothes in my basement now. It's pretty small, and is inhabited by feral cats. My dryer works fine, but I can't afford much electricity.
An idea popped in my head one morning. Later that morning, my husband came home from an appointment to find a sign on the door that leads upstairs.
"Beware of low-flying laundry."

We keep the stairs door closed to keep the heat on the main floor. The furnace can't seem to pump much air to the top floor, so we don't use it much. What better place to put laundry to dry, than in the stairwell where warm air leaks upwards from the main floor? I can fit about a load and a half in this space. It takes about 36 hours to dry a load of jeans, but it's FREE!


The chicken wire is a different story. It was one of our first adventures in home ownership. The rails above the stairs are wide enough apart for even a large child to slip through, much less a chicken. I think it's going to become fashionable, as I've seen it in a friend's house as well, used in the same way.