The Universal Tool

The universal tool for my mother was the clothes pin.  When we cleaned out her house after her death, we collected bags of clothes pins.  The sheer number of clothes pins we collected from around the house made my sister and me wish we owned stock in clothes pin companies.  Considering that for years and years there had been a clothes dryer at Mom's house and that in about the last two decades before she passed away there had not even been a clothes line there, these clothes pins were noteworthy.

Besides using clothes pins to pin clothes on a clothes line, Mom used clothes pins to hold clothes on hangers, to hold an errant curtain in place such as if one lost its hook or stitching, to clip papers or pictures together, to hold bread bags and other food bags closed (such or potato chip bags), to affix something temporarily to her apron, to mark a place in a book--particularly music books, to clip a house plant to a stake, to clip part of a costume to the rest of the costume,   to clip a recipe card  in a handy place while Mom cooked, to create a temporary tieback for curtains if she was opening the windows for a cross breeze, and any other uses that might pop up in the ordinary course of life.

I carry clothes pins in my overnight bag so I can pin the never-quite-closing hotel curtains when we are out of town.  I am always reminded of my mother as I retrieve the clothes pin from my bag and clip it to the curtain.  I use clothes pins much the way my mother did so the multiple bags of clothes pins I inherited have not gone to waste.

I thought my mother was unique in her multi-use of clothes pins but I read a recent copy of Reader's Digest (maybe October 2012?) and there was a small article on the uses for clothes pins! Here is a link to another item on the Reader's Digest website about clothes pins  and their extra uses.  Who knew Mom was part of a larger group of aficionados of my mother's universal tool: the clothes pin?