Clothesline Fresh!

According to THIS ARTICLE, in the late 1960's, Audrey Gaiser was doing her laundry.  Audrey and her husband lived on the top two floors of a duplex and poor Audrey had to run all the way down the stairs to the ground floor to add liquid fabric softener to her wash on the final rinse cycle.  Audrey's husband, Conrad was a kind and caring husband. He hated to see his wife work her fingers to the bone and wanted to make her life easier.

Conrad's gears in his head began spinning.  He had worked in the soap and detergent industry and he began testing out some ideas in his wife's sewing room by applying liquid fabric softener to flannel rags and before long, he had a prototype that he called Tumble Puffs.  By putting one of his Tumble Puffs into the dryer, it saved Audrey a trip down the stairs and made her a very happy lady. Conrad was a good guy.

She was, I'm sure, even happier when Conrad Gaiser patented his invention in 1969 and then sold the rights to his Tumble Puffs to Proctor & Gamble.  Proctor & Gamble launched Conrad & Audrey's Tumble Puffs in 1975 under the name of Bounce Dryer Sheets.  You may have heard of those. Suffice it to say that Audrey probably never did a "lick" of laundry after that.  She had someone doing her laundry for her!

We don't use Dryer Sheets at our house.  We found something better.  From my childhood, one of the freshest fragrances I can think of was crisp, white bedsheets after they had hung out on a clothesline all day in the sunshine.  That's fresh!  We use muslin rags to line the top of our milking buckets.  The rags serve as a filter to keep dust, hay, hair, and bugs out of the milk.  After we wash the rags, we hang them out in the sunshine in the morning.

Hung out to dry

As I hung them Saturday morning, the steam was rising off of the rags.  They were wet, so the weight kept them from blowing very much in the wind.

Wet milking rags

By the end of the day, though, the rags were dry.  They were bleached by the brilliant sun.  The sun also acts as a disinfectant, keeping the rags clean and white. If we didn't do this, the yellow cream would have the rags dyed a dull yellow color. The sunshine keeps the rags white.

Who needs Bounce?!

As I pulled at the clothespins and removed the white milking rags from the clothesline, I brought the rags close to my face and inhaled.  Fresh, Clean, Sterile. And we didn't even have to use Bounce. Sorry Conrad...