Drying clothes in a dryer uses up some 6% of household energy, so drying clothes outside is a great green living step, right?
Not in many communities, where regulations prohibit the use of outdoor clotheslines. Many people still associate laundry lines with tenements of old, and find sheets and shirts hanging in the breeze an unsightly indication of poverty.
But some residents are fighting back. Throughout the country, regulations against outdoor clotheslines are crumbling as more people now associate them with sustainable living.
What's happening in your town?
Comments
Can’t use them in my neighborhood yet. Pittsford, NY
if you can’t use clotheslines, start drying small stuff at the laundry dryer!
Patrick, have you tried drying clothes indoors? I wonder how well that works for people who can’t use outdoor clotheslines.
I dry shirts and delicates indoors in the laundry room and kitchen but still use the dryer for heavy items – otherwise they drip all over the floor. If they’re not completely dry at the end of the first cycle, I’ll drape them about on the furniture overnight and they’re dry by morning.
My grandmother still dries most everything outside. I think it’s beautiful to see the sheets blowing in the breeze.
I dry on the line when I can. Usually blankets, sheets and at home clothes. I don’t put socks, underclothes or towels on the line, becuase my husband was exposed to Agent Orange in Viet Nam, and his skin is very sensitive. Due to the houses and a strip mall around us I get little or know wind and the clothes end up scratchy and rough.
As for drying indoors, My grandmother hung clothes in the basement during the winter. Decades later, I still miss the smell of woodsmoke on the blankets
Jeannie: I also love the sight of sheets billowing in the wind. Someday our sense of aesthetics will catch up with green living. (I also think wind turbines are pretty, but that’s just me.)
Marc, your guide to Green Living
I love hanging my clothes out to dry. I love the smell and feel of them when I bring them in. I’ve hung some things in the basement, actually I won’t hang my undies out, a couple of perverts in the neighborhood. I haven’t decided what I’ll do this winter, we just found a small snake (black snake) in the basement so I’m not too eager to go back down, my luck the momma is there.
Carol: between perverts and snakes, it sounds like you live in a wacky place!
But a snake in the basement is good luck — he’s probably feeding on mice and bugs.