I Love My Clothesline
Yes, I love my clothesline. It’s a metal “rotary” type, parasol shaped and collapsible, that I purchased after finally admitting that a do-it-yourself project was not going to happen. Water resistant cords connect four ribs that radiate out from the central pole.
The ritual of hanging out freshly washed laundry grounds me. Drying clothes outside is an ancient task that crosses boundaries of time and culture. It connects me with those who have done it, mostly women, including Maida, the reclusive owner of this house for forty years before me. I’m thankful for the clotheslines she strung in the basement—I even inherited her clothespins!
I enjoy standing on the grassy lawn, feeling sun and breeze on my face, bending and stretching my body, pinching the wooden or metal clothespins open and clamping them onto fabric. It can be a meditation, or an opportunity to daydream.
Clothing dried outdoors has a delightful fresh scent, takes advantage of sunshine’s natural germ-killing and whitening properties, and produces minimal wrinkles. As for that scratchy towel effect, well, I like it. Years ago, the owner of a shop specializing in fine linens warned me that standard dryers “beat the life out of fabrics.” The lint that collects in the filter proves her point. And who hasn’t experienced the frustration of a favorite garment shrunk in the dryer?
Despite the undeniable time and convenience factors in pulling clothes from a washing machine and loading them directly into the nearby dryer, I hang out laundry year round, even in Seattle’s damp winters. Sometimes I wait for good weather, sometimes I gamble. Miscalculation means the wash may hang out overnight—or that I gratefully use the dryer. Freeze dried laundry, incidentally, holds little moisture.
I haven’t spotted other clotheslines in my neighborhood, even while walking through alleys. Backyards are prime clothesline territory, but fences often screen them from view. Clearly, I’m in the minority, at least in the USA. It’s different in Europe, where line drying is the traditional and preferred method and clotheslines are common in private courtyards, backyards and strung between buildings, providing a colorful subject for photographers. Some apartment complexes in Sweden provide dedicated rooms with clotheslines and fans for indoor drying. Sunny Australia, “land of clotheslines,” designates the Hill’s Hoist, a rugged umbrella-style clothesline inspired by older models in 1945, as an official National Treasure; there’s a sample on display in the National Museum of Australia.
Part of my reward for the extra time and effort of line-drying clothes is the sense that I’m taking small personal steps to ward off climate disaster. Less electricity used equals less burden on the electrical grid, less carbon polluting the atmosphere, less damage to the planet in the form of dams that threaten salmon runs.
Technically, Washington is not among the 20 states where public demand has led to “right to dry laws,” but here clotheslines are protected under the solar energy umbrella, exempting them from homeowner association rules that ban clotheslines. Some 60 million people in the US and Canada who live in communities, condos, or apartment complexes can be fined for using clotheslines, considered unaesthetic or suggestive of tenements, third world countries, and a discarded past.
Regarding such thinking, Jon Howland wrote in a Sightline Institute article (sightline.org), “Well, there’s no arguing with tastes, but clotheslines can be beautiful. They can also be flags of freedom from dirty energy and expensive power bills. And whatever your personal sensibility, a rack of clothes drying on a condo balcony isn’t ugly like its alternatives: a strip mine; a coal train; a forest stricken with pine beetles; a town deluged, burned, or leveled by the worsened floods, fires, and storms that carbon-induced climate change is sending our way.”
For those who are unable to use outdoor clotheslines, there are many nifty indoor drying racks to choose from. There’s also good news on the appliance front from energystar.gov, sponsored jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. According to EPA figures, standard dryers hog more energy than refrigerators, washing machines, or dishwashers. However, Energy Star certified dryers, utilizing innovative technologies including moisture sensors that shut off the dryer when clothes are dry, can save about 20% of energy used. Other features may include steam cycles that minimize wrinkles. The Energy Star website states, “If all clothes dryers sold in the US were ENERGY STAR certified, Americans could save more than $1.5 billion each year in utility costs and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from more than 2 million vehicles.”
While raising my kids at Silver Bay Herb Farm, I used the homemade clothesline that had served the family before us for years. One day I played hide and seek with a visiting child of ten, both of us ducking and dodging the billowing sheets, shrieking with laughter. That memory brings me joy, like a basket of sun and wind-kissed laundry, fresh from my clothesline. Hanging clothes to dry is a small step, but together, each of us taking small steps can make a powerful, positive difference.