The Appliances are Conspiring...

Sunday night our dryer stopped working. My washer and dryer seem to have an arrangement: only one of them is allowed to break at a time. However, the washer typically breaks when I'm down to three clean diapers and no back-up disposables. The dryer breaks when it's raining, snowing, or both. Yesterday being a somewhat nice day in late February (39 degrees and windy), I did the obvious and hung one load of clothes on the line. It took six hours, but hey, it was free and the job got done.

Today is also 39 degrees but pouring down rain with the threat of snow later in the day. While my youngest is decently attired thanks to yesterday, my oldest has no pants.

Never one to back away from a challenge, I scoffed at the concept of lugging my wet clothes to a laundromat and sitting there for an hour while they tumbled dry. Too complicated and too obvious. Instead, I went on Pinterest and found a tutorial on making a drying rack from an old baby gate.

Wait, thought I. We have an old 6 foot baby gate that has been gathering dust for the past three years! Problem was, it wouldn't stay extended vertically. Thankfully, with our house being in such disrepair, I'm always finding random aftermarket pieces of our house that don't seem to belong. There is one such giant hole in our ceiling with a railing around it. I hooked the lip of the baby gate into the rail and extended it to the floor.

I think I can fix our dryer with a $20 part and a screwdriver but in the meantime, it's good to have this completely free solution.

In case you were wondering, I dug into my oldest child's summer stuff and paired some things up with tights and jackets to get her through the next few days. And yes, I did wash more diapers just in case. Don't want to cut it too close again.