http://www.care2.com/greenliving/letting-it-all-hang-out-the-clothesline-wars.html
Letting It All Hang Out: The Clothesline Wars
It seems like one of the simplest of household tasks – hanging out the laundry to dry. But this simple task has received quite a bit of controversy. The politics of laundry drying is the subject of a recent New York Times article that chronicles a woman’s struggle to put her laundry out to dry.
After learning about the threat of global warming, Jill Saylor decided to hang her clothes outside on a line behind her mobile home to save some energy. “I figured trailer parks were the one place left where hanging your laundry was actually still allowed,” Saylor told New York Times reporter Ian Urbina. But, she was wrong. Apparently, many people in her trailer park view clothes drying outside as an “eyesore,” so she was forbidden from doing so. According to the New York Times article, what happened to Saylor is not uncommon. In fact, 60 million people living in 300,000 private communities in the U.S. are banned from drying their clothes outside.
However, the laws are changing with implications that are cultural, political, economic and environmental. What’s behind the controversial clothesline wars?
• Proponents believe they should not be prohibited by their neighbors or local community agreements from saving on energy bills or acting in an environmentally-minded way.
• Opponents say the laws lifting bans on outside clothesline drying erode local property rights and undermine the autonomy of private communities.
Clothes dryers use at least six percent of all household electricity consumption and 10-15 percent of domestic energy in the U.S. The environmental impact of using the clothes dryer less could easily help each of us do our part for the planet.
Project Laundry List provides 10 reasons to hang dry laundry:
1. Save money.
2. Clothes last longer.
3. Clothes and linens smell better.
4. It conserves energy and environmental resources.
5. Hanging laundry is a moderate physical activity that can be done outside.
6. Sunlight bleaches and disinfects.
7. Indoor racks can humidify in dry and cold climates.
8. It is safer. Clothes dryer fires account for about 17,700 fires, 15 deaths and 360 injuries annually.
9. It is a fun outdoor experience that can be meditative and community-building.
10. Small steps make a difference.
The cultural and community-building component to laundry drying became evident to me a few years ago when I spent some time in Spain. The fourth floor apartment had a laundry line attached to a windowsill that connected to a neighbor’s window. Looking out the laundry window, as we affectionately called it, all the building occupant’s communal laundry lines crisscrossed up and down the center alley of the building. Everything from towels to underwear to sneakers went on the line to dry. Every few days I would lean out the window, retrieve my line and smile and wave to the other apartment dwellers as we put our laundry out to dry together. There seemed to be no class distinctions, rich and poor hung their laundry up to dry.
Maybe thinking about home building differently can nudge us closer to using the dryer less. Richard Seireeni, a Huffington Post writer suggests adding a “dry room” to homebuilders’ plans: “a place where the furnace, water heater (or tankless water heater) and washer/dryer could live together along with built-in lines or racks for drying [where] all that excess heat that is normally vented and wasted could be used to dry the family laundry, particularly in the winter when outdoor line drying is not always possible.” Seireeni’s idea is simple, efficient, and could save a homeowner a lot of money.
However, if you’re stuck in a house without a “dry room,” and don’t have the means to line dry your clothes outside, especially as the air gets cooler for those of us on the northern hemisphere, here are some tips to lighten your dryer’s energy load.
So, what happened to Ms. Saylor, from the mobile home park? “Pressure makes a difference,” she told NY Times. A petition was delivered to the property owner, who recently complied with Saylor, and victory was hers.
What do you think? Should drying laundry au natural be a cultural, political, economic or environmental clash? Do you believe that sheets dancing in the wind are beautiful because they help heal the environment, or do you want to look outside your window and see nature, not laundry?
And while you’re at it, check out the trailer for Drying For Freedom, a documentary that follows the movement to lift the bans on clothes lines:
Ronnie Citron-Fink lives in New York with her husband, two children (when they come home to the nest), two dogs and a cat. Ronnie is a teacher and a writer. She has been a contributing writer for Family Fun magazine. She currently writes articles about education and home design. Her writings are in four books including Family Fun Home and Some Delights of the Hudson Valley.
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30 comments
add your comment »I have had a clothes line most of my life. When I moved into my home 12 years ago I had a clothes line installed. A year ago the heater in my dryer died, I have not bothered to have it repaired. I love the smell of sheets that have been dryed outside. In the winter I have a rack that can hold 2 average sized loads. The humidity is an added bonus in the winter. I wouldn't live in a community that banned drying your laundry outside.
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My Nanny taught me that hanging up clothes is how a woman keeps her girlish figure! She would first load up the wet clothes and show me the correct way to pick up a heavy basket and carry up the back steps from the basement. She had a wringer washer.
Then she demonstrated the correct method of bending stretching and reaching as we hung the clothing out with pins made of wood. We did not keep them in our teeth! Aprons or the hanging pin basket was always used.
Now-a-days I perfome many of the same movements...in yoga class!
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I love hanging clothes out to dry. I hang everything but towels & the whites & underwear. Nothing like hopping out of the shower & jumping into a bed with nice clean sheets that were dried out on the line. I am naive - did not know there were laws against hanging out clothes until I moved to Oregon. My DH made me a nice clothesline with lattice on the ends so I can plant climbining roses. Hopefully where I live there is no law about the clotheslines.
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Go Yolanda! I have often mentioned the exact same thing... With the way the economy is going, we may be FORCED into doing all of that again! It's so sad that it takes an economic crisis to bring us back to the good old days when being green wasn't being green, it was the way of life. We realize it now, but it's almost too late. My grandmother would love to hang her clothes out to dry, but living in a condo, they consider it an eyesore too. Her sister still hangs her laundry to this day and says she will hang it until she just can't anymore. She still washes her clothes by hand in a big huge basement sink with a stick and uses a clothes ringer too! In the winter months she hangs them in her basement. I remember helping her with the laundry when I was younger and it was something I enjoyed helping her with. She used to take my brother and me for school shopping and buy us each a new outfit. She would NOT let us wear it until it had been washed and hung on the line for the sun to disinfect it. Starting my green endeavor (and now 5 years into it), I really appreciate what she instilled in me :)
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ha ha ha!... can't believe this... i'm mexican we hang it all... nothing like the sun
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"Do you believe that sheets dancing in the wind are beautiful because they help heal the environment, or do you want to look outside your window and see nature, not laundry?" I would like to think tht my children and their children will still have the opportunity to look out and enjoy nature so I will keep hanging out my laundry and do my bit to save the earth.
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whoops, typo "flour sacks made into clothing" was what I meant to type, had laundry on the brain HA! :)
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My Mama hung our clothes on the line as long as I can remember. I remember going out and helping her take down the clothes off of the line and they would be very warm (we lived in Texas) and smelled so nice. I miss the way clothes smelled and felt after coming off of the line. We were upper middle class people too, and Mama never thought anything of it hanging clothes on the line. She preferred it to the dryer because she said the dryer always made the house so much hotter (which in Texas it's hot enough). Also, I started thinking about how she told me they did laundry in the Depression Days when she was a girl with boiling water from the stove or pot over a fire. And how they caught rainwater in a barrel to wash their hair with which was a treat cause she said it made your hair extremely soft. And they reused everything they could. Flour sacks made into laundry,etc. The quilts made out of scraps of clothes outgrown. Mama would turn old worn out clothes into cleaning rags. I also remember her gardening & we had fresh vegetables and fruits all the time, and of course they used to can a lot too when she was a kid. Those days were hard, but seems like they were also greener when she was growing up in the Depression Era. And some of those ways stayed even when she later became a quite wealthy wife. Maybe we can learn from those days of not wasting.
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All of my life washed clothes have been hung outside to dry.
There is nothing better than sunlight to keep whites white.
Also destroys bacteria and germs.
There is nothing more delightful than seeing a line full of terry towelling nappies waving in the breeze, makes the home look more homely and lived in naturally.
Keep hanging out your clothes ladies.
I live in Australia.
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Not only have I always hung clothes on a line, but when my child was little and always wanting to 'help'. I made a short clothes line just for her to hang her own things on.I can't imagine people being so bored, or nosey or petty that they would make a stink out of someone hanging their laundry out.There must be some goofy dysfunctional underlying reason for this.A need to assert domination over another, hatred towards others, what? What ever it is, denying people the right to dry their laundry in the fresh air and sunlight is about as pathetic as it gets.
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