Hanging out the washing is an unusual and surprising thing: a pleasurable household chore. If it’s a fresh morning and the sun is shining, the simple act of pegging clothes on a line before you can lift the spirits and blow away gloominess. As the days extend and there’s more likelihood of sun, it’s also a chance to get outdoors and away from everyone indoors. Doing something methodical provides the opportunity for a moment or two of peaceful reflection – just you, the breeze, a handful of pegs and some billowing sheets. The results are also worth it: the fresh, outdoor smell of line-dried laundry will have you burying your nose in the laundry basket and inhaling deeply. As a method of drying clothes, pegging out is 100% better than piling them in an energy-gobbling, clothes-battering tumble dryer, or heaping them on radiators and leaving them to steam.

Every washing line needs a bag full of pegs nearby for easy pegging out. How to cunningly create one from a child’s polo shirt.

Here’s a clever thing: peg bags are suspended from a hanger so, rather than create a new bag from scratch, why not use an item that is already the right shape and size? Buy a child’s polo shirt (the one above is £3.99, hm.com), or better still use one they have grown out of or no longer like. Turn it inside out, stitch the bottom of the shirt closed about half way down the length of the body, trim surplus fabric, and turn it the right way round. Insert a child’s hanger and fill with pegs. Job done.

Turn to page 111 of May's The Simple Things for more on pegging out.