Things I Own and Love, but Don't Possess (Yet)

When we were in Italy in 2004, we stayed at an amazing Agritourismo, Villa Stabbia.

They generously allowed us the use of their laundry facilities, which consisted of a nice Bosch front-loader washing machine. Instead of a drying machine, there was a T-rack clothesline outside our front door, right next to the orange tree. Our clothes have Never. Smelled. Fresher.

Moments after we cleared customs on the way back into our country, we ran to MacLendon's Hardware to pick up an umbrella-style folding clothesline. The model we bought cost $75, and lasted just one year before the cheap aluminum arms and plastic joints busted on us. We had saved enough on electricity costs by not using our dryer that we had enough in the bank to get another one, which lasted another year and then busted on us too.

Because my darling Lawnboy refuses to throw anything away (am I guilty here as well? Probably.), we now had two identical clothesline thingys. Which meant Lawnboy could patch something together in a time-consuming, but not too quality, method (sorry, Babe, you know it's true). He "fixed" the clothesline by putting together the good parts and slapping the sad, bent, sagging thing back up. Then he put the broken bits back in our shed.

This year, we delicately loaded our clothes to make sure they didn't break our precious clothesline. It was doomed from the start, but we gave it a go. It broke on us last weekend.

We had already decided that we didn't want to buy another piece of crap that would break within a year, so Lawnboy went on a hunt for a Quality clothesline. He found one. The TS-140 has all metal joinings (not plastic like our old one), and is guaranteed not to break for 10(!) years. We bought it yesterday and anxiously await its arrival.

I suppose we should throw the other ones away at some point.