Putting It on the Line in Alicante

Clothes dryers are rare in Spain. With a washing machine in our Airbnb but no dryer, we’ve actually enjoyed hanging laundry over a rack to dry on our terrace. It’s not nearly as much trouble as it sounds, so today we tried a new challenge.

We hung one of our sheets from the clothesline that stretches on pulleys across the length of our fifth-floor apartment in the San Blas neighborhood of Alicante. The short video above shows how. The line is accessible by a small window in our kitchen and another in our second bedroom.

Yes, it’s a bit of a high wire act. Other residents of our building are good at it. They frequently use the lines outside their windows that face onto our building’s small inner courtyard.

But until today, we hadn’t quite envisioned how to use ours.

It took several attempts, but we succeeded, working together, of course, with me at the kitchen window, Ted stationed in the bedroom.

With four hands on deck, our clean sheet toed the line, avoiding the fate of one of the clothespins I dropped in the process.

It’s a long way down.

Thank goodness nothing else met a similar fate.

Like flipping an egg in a frying pan without breaking the yolk, hanging clothes five stories up simply takes a little confidence.

So, on this our fourth week in Alicante, we can say we’ve met one of the toughest Spanish laundry challenges.

Whew … that’s a load off our minds.