neat and cheap: the classic clothespin
An Apartment Therapy post on the many uses for a simple clothespin really speaks to my love of multi-functional objects. I don’t have a line for drying my clothes, but I might invest in a bag of clothespins to take advantage of the little object’s many uses. Plus, there is something sort of nostalgic about a simple wooden clothespin, don’t you think? Especially since this bag of 50 costs less than $1. –Erica P.
I love clothespins! I won’t travel without them. You can use them to convert hotel hangers into pants hangers, to hang up hand-washed items for line drying, to clip together those hotel blackout drapes that never quiiiiite meet up in the middle, to close up the family-size potato chip bag you had to buy when you only wanted a few chips because that was the only size they had…
I actually use clothespins for hanging my laundry, as well as for various kitchen and household tasks. Sadly, the new wooden clothespins, like the ones mentioned in the post above, are nowhere near as sturdy and well made as older ones of the same design.
Now that there are no manufacturers left in the USA, and they are being made in China, the quality is suffering, I hate having the wooden part break, and more commonly the wire spring is often so barely up for the job that the two halves come apart and the wire spring piece flies away into the yard somewhere. If this happened only once , I would say well that was a fluke, but the last several bags of clothespins I’ve bought, from different stores, have all been s**t.
Sorry for the rant, but I would gladly pay ten times .99 if I could get sturdy well made wooden clothespins.
I keep 3-4 clothepins in my travel kit. I use them every night in the hotel room, to keep the curtains tightly closed , blocking out light.
I use them for all sorts of things…closing up chip bags, marshmallows, chocolate chips, brown sugar…anything that doesn’t close on its own…I also use them for hanging up artwork that my kids do…you can also attatch magnets to the back of them to stick on your fridge to hold everything from artwork to grocery lists to pictures…no one ever thinks about using these things for something other than drying clothes