Clothespins

What are clothespins?

Clothespins are ordinary laundry pegs that serve as a cheap clamp in BDSM, on nipples, skin folds, or labia. They pinch more weakly than play clamps and don’t adjust. You dose with the spot and the number, not with force. The worst pain comes when they come off.

How does a clothespin work?

With a lever and a spring, and that is exactly why there is nothing to adjust. The encyclopedia describes the modern design as two legs that hinge around a pivot with a spring between them. Squeeze the top and the jaws open. Let go and the spring pulls them shut again. David M. Smith of Springfield, Vermont, patented it in 1853. Willow and ash were the classic materials, and plastic came later.

The older design is a single piece of wood with a slit in it, no spring. It grips far more loosely and slides right off. That is why it is always the spring type you see in a playroom.

Why do people use clothespins?

To be able to count. Where a screw clamp asks for a setting, a clothespin asks only for a spot, and that makes it right for building a scene slowly. First one, then three, then ten across the whole belly. For you, lying underneath, the tension sits in the wait between one clothespin and the next, not in the clothespin itself.

The upside is also the limit. A clothespin can’t go softer, so if you find it too sharp, your only choice is a spot with more skin.

How long can you leave clothespins on?

Shorter than you’d think, and the reason isn’t blood flow. In the StatPearls chapter on nerve injury, Nadi, Dabbas, and Das describe that a compression injury involves both oxygen shortage and mechanical deformation, but that the mechanical deformation is the main mechanism. Short-term oxygen shortage of less than two hours, according to that same chapter, leaves no irreversible damage. The mildest form of nerve injury is called neurapraxia. It comes from local compression or oxygen shortage and causes temporary numbness and tingling because conduction drops out at that spot.

That literature is about nerve pathways in arms and legs, not a nipple, so don’t count out minutes from it. What you do take from it is this. The pressure is what does the damage. Hence the rule of thumb on the page about the alligator clamp, which is deliberately a good deal stricter than what the clinic measures. If a spot turns white or goes numb, the clothespin comes off.

Where this fits on this site

Nipple clamps and pain play from soft to hard are a yes on my profile, and a handful of clothespins is the cheapest way to find out where your limit is. The page about the BDSM date lays out how we go over that beforehand.

Sources

• Peripheral Nerve Injury. Mustafa Nadi, Waleed Dabbas & Joe M. Das, StatPearls Publishing, updated February 15, 2026 (NBK549848). Provides the description of neurapraxia as the mildest form of nerve injury, which typically arises from local ischemia or compression, affects the myelin sheath, and reduces or blocks conduction at that spot, with temporary sensory complaints like numbness and tingling; and, for a compression injury, that both ischemia and mechanical deformation contribute, with mechanical deformation the main mechanism and short-term ischemia of less than two hours turning out to leave no irreversible loss of function.
• Clothespin. Wikipedia. Provides the two constructions, the spring type with two legs around a pivot that a squeeze at the top forces open and the spring pulls shut again, the 1853 patent of David M. Smith of Springfield, Vermont, and the materials: willow or ash, later plastic, and stainless steel versions.

Related terms

• Alligator clamp. The toothed, far sharper clamp, with the time limit that goes with it.
• Weights. What people hang from a clamp once the pinch alone isn’t enough anymore.
• Breast torture. The practice clothespins end up in most often, showing the mild side and the heavy side together.
• Impact play. The neighboring way to dose pain, with a strike instead of pressure.
• Abrasion. Another sensation that comes from the skin itself and has no setting.
• Clamps. The overarching category the clothespin is the cheapest version of.
• Zipper. The same clothespins on a string, off in one pull.
• Nipple clamps. The tool the clothespin is the cheap replacement for, with the second wave of pain when they come off.
• Tit torture. The heavier breast play, the kind clothespins actually fall outside of in the research.
• Laundry pegs. The household object itself, with the spring as its only spec and the difference between wood and plastic.