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Wash Day: Clothespins

DRYING CLOTHES Bag for Clothespins. - The ordinary 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 cracking.

Dip the heads of part of the clothespins 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, towels, 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 baglike pocket to contain clothespins, to wear while hanging out the clothes. ز Or put clothespins into a small basket (an ordinary grape basket is convenient), 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 excellent 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 suspended 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 necessitates leaving the clothesline out of doors.

Or set the clothes basket and clothespin bag on a child's fourwheeled 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 a kettle of boiling water. Remove and dry near the stove. The hot clothespins will help to keep the hands warm in freezing weather.