Clothes pegs - longest lasting if left outside?

[Michael Chare]

Which will last longer if left outside, wooden clothes pegs or plastic clothes pegs?

[Jim Chisholm]

Wooden. I use clothes pegs to fix netting to a fruit cage. Plastic ones degrade in the sun and snap.

Jim

[alan_m]

There cannot be a definitive answer

It depends on the quality of the plastic and how much it rains in your area.

Some plastic pegs degrade with UV within months, others may last a couple of years before they become brittle and snap when used.

With wooden pegs the metal springs tend to go rusty quicker and the wood tends to hold the atmospheric dirt easier. A wooden peg stays wetter for longer after rain compared with plastic and hence the metal rusts quicker. Older wooden pegs left outside on the line leave dirt/rust marks on the washing. At which point do you discard a wooden peg?

[Mike Clarke]

No metal to rust if you go for traditional wooden dolly pegs

(Ebay link)

[Brian-Gaff]

Wooden by far. I'd suggest though that you make sure they are not rubbish ones to start with! Plastic ones seem to go brittle very very quickly if out in the sun rain and cold. Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

Which was why I said get good ones. Most of them have some plating on the springs but not all. Brian

[damduck-egg]

We find plastic ones get brittle very quickly if left outside probably due to UV , for really cheap ones outside can be using them to hang clothes rather than weeks used on garden purposes.

G.Harman

[damduck-egg]

We used to call those Gypsy pegs, Romany women used to sell them in the days when they travelled around with the husband doing seasonal agricultural work . Ours must have been years old.

G.Harman

[Michael Chare]

That is an interesting idea. I want the pegs to hold a plastic rubbish bag in a mini wheely bin. Because they are left out all the time the plastic pegs I have been using have suffered from the sunlight.

[Rob Morley]

Would it not be better to use a bungee? They seem to last for years outside, although the outer braid can turn to dust.

[newshound]

+1 to all that. FWIW we went over to (good) plastic

[mcp]

Dark coloured plastic ones are much more resistant to UV. I've got some red and blue ones that are >15 years old, all the white ones from the same pack are long gone.

[Adam Funk]

There are some all-plastic ones that we've had good long-term use from, but we don't leave them on the line without laundry. (One of our relatives made us a clothespeg-handbag which hangs on the back of the cellar door when not in use.)

[tabbypurr]

Plastic. I got both types over a decade ago, none of the wood ones have survived, some plastic have. Plastic goes britle & snaps, wood becomes too rough for clothes as water raises the grain too much.

NT

[Michael Chare]

I use a bungee on another round bin to keep the lid on in the wind. It has been there for years. Our non recycle rubbish gets collected in a black plastic bag which we keep in a half height wheely bin. I use clothes pegs to stop the bag falling to the bottom of the bin.

[Chris J Dixon]

I use one to store my wheelbarrow upright against the fence, but the rubbers do fail progressively after a year or two.

Chris

[Nightjar]

You can buy stainless steel bulldog clips, which might be a better choice than either type of clothes peg.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Rob Morley explained :

To retain the wheelie bin liner in our bin, I drilled a couple of small holes through where the lid hinge is, threaded string through both holes and round the rest of the bin's lip and used a plated tensioning spring to pull the two ends of the string together.

That method of retaining the liner in place, survives a few emptying sessions and all we need do when the liner needs to be replaced, is release the string from the bin lip just before it is due to be emptied

- liner plus rubbish then falls out into the lorry.

It avoids the usual problem of the liner closing up and needing to be sorted out everytime you need to put something in the bin.

Many years ago, I made a bin store....

Nothing fancy - Just a lean to roof alongside our garden hut, just big enough for our three wheelie bins plus a bit. The roof along one edge is bolted to the hut wall. With three 3x3 vertical timbers supporting the outer end of the roof. I then filled in between the roof supports with feathered edge fencing panels. I hinged one of the panels to make access to the bins easy and left a gap in the panels top and bottom. The opening fence panel proved not to be strong enough for regular use, so I reinforced one side with a welded Dexion frame on its inside.

I then later decided it would make life easier, if the bins could be left with their lids open, yet covered with some thin ply - so I hinged some ply on the hut wall, using car seat belt material to form a loose hinge.

[Brian Gaff]

As I say, it very much depends on the wood and quality and of course what you want them for. Not everyone uses them for clothes.

Then there are the old style ones that look like a piece of wood with a v in one end that tend to eventually split all the way up. They can be quite good as no rust marks as they have no spring. There are some really different ones around made by two bits of polythene with a spring a bit like an almost open key ring. These suddenly fail when the raw end of the spring finally makes it through the plastic. Brian

[Tim Lamb]

For conventional metal dustbins in the workshop, I fold the top edge of the liner over the bin rim and secure it with a ring of rubber shock cord. The back up has a length of cord joined by a coiled spring:-)