RV Motor Home Lifestyle – Another PVC Solution

Mitch | Jan 29, 2010 | Comments 0

: Image via Wikipedia

by Laura Weaver

Since we live in our motorhome about two-thirds of the year, traveling from place to place, we often find ourselves in need of a clothesline. Of course, the laundry facilities in most of the campgrounds we stay in have electric or gas dryers for our convenience. However, there are occasions when using the dryer is neither feasible nor preferable.

One such occasion is when we have delicate or “special care” laundry, which should not be dried by machine. It would be nice to be able to hang such items on a small clothesline. Another example is when we have wet or damp bathing suits and beach towels that need to dry. There is simply not enough space inside the motor home to hang these; and strewing them outside, about the campsite, over tree limbs or on picnic tables is an eyesore and the beach towels often do not dry thoroughly because of the lack of air circulation.

The same is true for car-wash towels and wet cleaning rags. Imagine the sour odor and risk of mildew by leaving these items in the bottom of the clothes basket instead of drying them out first until they can be washed.

Letting the bed sheets air dry after washing allows that clean, fresh-air scent to permeate throughout the motorhome. The crisp feel if air-dried sheets makes a very comfortable bed in which to sleep.

Because we travel, we do not have access to a permanently placed clothesline. Nor are we able to make use of an umbrella-type clothesline because, even though it folds up, it is still quite large and we do not have the space to store it and take it along with us. It is also not a good idea to try to stick this type of clothesline into the ground at our different campsites because of not knowing exactly where the underground utilities are.

After deciding that we would benefit greatly by having some sort of an outdoor clothesline for our personal use, we came up with the idea to design one to fit our needs. We used PVC pipe to make our travel clothesline. It was actually quite simple to do. Here’s how:

1) Make a square frame out of the PVC pipe using 1- or 2-inch PVC connected by elbow joints at the four corners.

2) Drill holes
through the two side sections of the frame and thread rope through the holes, knotting at the ends. This is your clothesline. You can make as many lines as you wish, spacing them evenly. We’ve found six to be sufficient for our needs.

3) Attach two PVC support bars along the back end of the frame via joint connectors. At the other end of the support bars, attach elbow joints and short sections of PVC at the ends to make a hook to go over the back ladder of the motorhome.

This travel clothesline comes apart easily for storage purposes. When not in use, it can be tied up to the back ladder using stretchy cords instead of extended out.

PVC pipe has become almost as useful as duck tape. The uses are numerous. First, we built a framework to support our slide-out awning to prevent water from pooling. Now, we’ve designed a make-shift clothesline. With a little imagination, some creativity, and perseverance, PVC pipe can meet a lot of our motorhome needs.