Ten great reasons to unplug your dryer and use a clothesline instead
October 10, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Obama, Uncategorized, clotheslines, ecology, economy, energy saving, household spending, laundry, reducing spending, saving money
My “Writing Humor” class in Iowa bonded deeply with each other last summer. There’s something about writing, laughing, and almost drowning together that will do that to people, I suppose.
One of my classmates was a banjo-playing lawyer named Sheila Simon, who published an article promoting the use of clotheslines in the Chicago Tribune not long after our stint together in Iowa City. Here’s what Sheila and I have both discovered about hanging up our laundry:
- Save a hundred dollars on your electric bill every month.
- Keep your house cooler in the summer, and save on your AC bill, too.
- Hanging laundry takes much less time than you think.
- Line-dried laundry smells wonderful.
- You paid for that yard and all that landscaping, so why not enjoy it?
- Get to know your neighbors, too.
- Help humidify your house in the winter.
- Join virtually every other modern country on the planet.
- Get your daily ration of Vitamin “D.”
- You can still use your clothes dryer for emergencies.
A little more about humble Sheila. We particularly enjoyed a story she shared about her father driving the entire family to MacDonalds, where he gravely recited their lengthy take-out order… to a concrete traffic post.
Eventually, we learned that Sheila’s family is from Illinois. Later still, we learned that the take-out order had been delivered in the familiar, sonorous voice of a certain former Illinois legislator and presidential candidate.
Yeah, THAT Simon.
Nor did Sheila tell us that she was a politician herself, having just completed a (sadly unsuccessful) run for Carbondale mayor last Spring – with a little help from another Illinois senator, last name of “Obama.”
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More about clotheslines:
- Project Laundry List: everything you need for air-drying (and for low-energy clothes washing, too)
- Vermont Clothes Line Company: more air-drying supplies and ideas
- Clothesline rule creates flap: Boston Globe article on states which are once again embracing “The Right to Dry.”
- Do clotheslines really lower property values? Discussion, with many good links
- A Line in the Yard: The Battle over the Right To Dry Outside New York Times article on the world-wide resurgence of clotheslines
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Cross posted at Blogher.com
October 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
We hang our laundry outside all summer long. Even when it rains. Something satisfying about wearing rain-rinsed clothes. Actually, it’s a bit decadent.
I love the line, “clotheslines connote a landscape of poverty” in the article “Clothesline rule creates flap.” I suppose that means that only the poor can conserve in this country? I commute with my bike and I ride the train as much as possible. Sure, “beautiful people” don’t ride mass transit, but they should. You see more and learn more among the “people” than you do in your car.
Conserve because it’s the right thing to do, not because you have to.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I can’t wait to have my wife try this.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
That was a joke. Great post. Another good reason: hanging laundry up is a fun activity for the whole family.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I’m not sure if the neighbors like my laundry flapping in the breeze- but I, too, hang it out all summer long. Lately, the birds have taken to pooping on my laundry, however.
I haven’t figured out how to line dry it inside of our small house, so any indoor ideas are certainly welcome! Just started line drying cloth diapers!!! Not nearly as hard to do as I thought!
October 11th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Mine almost always dries in 1-2 hours… almost as fast as a clothes dryer would get it. I sometimes hang mine in the fall, winter and spring, too.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
We love line drying in our household! All the bungalows in our hipster row of Silverlake / Los Feliz (in Los Angeles) had and used their clotheslines. I mean, with that much sunshine…
And when we moved to Tennessee, one of the first things we did was put up a sleek and inexpensive clothesline that we hand-fashioned out of black metal piping… the kind you can get from the plumbing dept. of the hardware store.
But now… we’re in New England and wondering if there really is enough sun and heat to line dry year round. I’m thinking the clothes will probably freeze outside. I should probably check out some of that indoor drying equipment that’s so popular in the dark and cold northern European countries.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Well, it seems I’m preadhing to the choir (except you, Rufus. Naughty, sexist Rufus. Glad you Korrekted your OWN self, there! )
When we lived in England, we line-dried year-round -as did everyone else. And there’s not much sun in England in the winter. As long as it wasn’t raining, the laundry got dry. And even if it did rain, eventually the laundry still got dry.
We also had a very cool pulley-thing mounted on the ceiling over the stairway… you lowered it to hang the wash from it, then pulled it back up and out of the way until it dried.
An elderly British friend also told me of the once-ubiquitous “airing cupboards” that every British house would have… the hot water piping (or stove piping?) ran through these large closets to warm and remove any lingering dampness in any linens that were stored in them. They were also a wonderful place to get dressed on a cold winter morning in the unheated houses, before the fires had been started to warm things up…
May 9th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
I have been drying our clothes outdoors with a clothesline because our clothes dryer busted this past year. Have not looked back yet.