The Trouble with Clotheslines
Trent, over at The Simple Dollar, wrote about his and his wife’s decision not to use a clothesline, even though they’d like to and it would be better for their pocketbooks and the environment than running the dryer.
The thought of putting out a clothesline had crossed my mind after moving into my new apartment, too. However, like Trent, I believe that clotheslines are something the neighbors and complex managers wouldn’t want to see in others’ apartment patios. There’s no specific policy against it, that I’ve seen, but there are general policies in the residents’ handbook that prohibit things hanging from patios (like flags) and discourage outdoor storage and the like.
When I spent three months in Venice, I had no dryer at all. I lived in a second-story apartment with a rotating clothesline out my front window, and whenever I did laundry and the weather permitted, I hung my wet shirts and pants outside to dry, and my socks and “unmentionables” along the shorter lines strung across the bathroom window, which faced an inner courtyard rather than the street and nearby canal. On days that it was cold or rainy — rather often, since I was there over winter to spring — the laundry ended up draped all over my small studio apartment. And, indeed, once in a while I’d be out shopping when the weather would suddenly change, and I’d think with dismay of all my clothes getting soaked again on the line.
Using a line did involve a paradigm shift for me — like so many Americans, I associated line-dried laundry with poverty. It took me to get used to hanging my clothes outside, but I grew to appreciate it. Line-drying clothing is more economical and ecologically sound. Oh, I don’t want to give up my dryer, don’t get me wrong. It takes forever for a pair of jeans to dry in cool weather, and putting on dryer-warmed socks on a winter day is a little slice of heaven. Dryers definitely have their uses. But on hot, upper-90s days like today, putting laundry out to dry in the sun just makes more financial and ecological sense than running a dryer.
I wonder how long it will take for the new green movement in America to embrace clotheslines again.
drupagliassotti @ May 17, 2008