Long before there were automatic dryers with variable spin settings and temperatures, there was the simple and super cheap clothesline.
After using my cabled dog run as a makeshift line for bedding for the past several years, I found an old fashioned umbrella style clothesline on ebay and asked Handyman Mike to install it in my back yard. Now I’m in fresh-air laundry heaven. Until you’ve retrieved laundry from the outdoors and taken a whiff, you’ve not lived. It’s better than room freshener, scented candles and dryer sheets because it is a fragrance created completely by nature.
Forgoing the electric or gas dryer for some rope stretched from tree to tree or a $39.00 contraption like mine can make a big difference in the environment, and our record-early strawberry crop and rose blush in Syracuse are an indication the planet could use the help. According to the website laundrylist.org, if all Americans used a clothesline for ten months of the year, we could avoid 12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, annually.
Only 4 percent of Italian homes have a clothes dryer
There’s another reason to take the laundry outdoors. That same website states dryer fires account for an average of 15 deaths and $194 million dollars in property damage each year. If a dryer fire never strikes your home you’re still paying for the convenience of an automatic dryer with a higher electric bill and the deterioration of your clothing. All that lint you remove each cycle is the fiber of your clothing going away.
True, taking clothes outdoors and hanging them does take more time than throwing it all into the dryer, and not everyone has that extra time. But for those who hop in the car to go to the gym, you can save yourself some of that workout by lugging wet clothes to the line. The up and down motion of hanging burns calories.
The "whites" drying in the fresh air in my backyard
Unfortunately an estimated 300,000 homeowner’s associations around the country restrict clotheslines due to the “unsightly’ nature of them. Continuing the clean theme I say this is hogwash. Why is a clean, environmentally friendly practice anything but beautiful?
Keep in mind there is a code of ethics with clotheslines even if your neighborhood does not restrict their use. Make sure you hang your clothing closer to your own house than your neighbor’s. If you don’t want to see your underwear flapping in the breeze outside your window, think of how little your neighbor wants to see it outside theirs. It is especially rude to hang your clothes completely out of site of your own home, say behind some trees or a garage, and within full view of the neighbors. Other than that common sense code, I say, hang to your heart’s content.
After helping my mother at the clothesline since the 1960s I thought I knew everything about the natural way to dry things, but I learned something new today. Laundrylist.org featured a comment posted by a 91 year old reader that said when the weather gets cold you can bring the wet clothes out to freeze. By the time the board-stiff things thaw out indoors, they’re dry!
I don’t want to wish the summer away, but I can’t wait to try it.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I love hanging my clothes outside to dry! I have a perfectly good dryer, but it can’t beat the great outdoors!
Wish I could have a clothesline behind the townhouse. I can attest to the “freeze dry” method of line drying. It really does work!
Good Mornin Maureen, Great idea to hang your cloths outside. I remember my mother doing that and being down town when it started to rain. The trip home in our 1948 Ford coupe would of made Jeff Gordon proud ! The birds like the target practise also. Boy those were the days and I am happy for your rebuilding this great Monday experience for all of us who also hung the rugs on the cloths line and beat hell out of them with a rug beater. That is why country boys made good baseball players from that practise!
Maureen, I have to agree the whiff of fresh laundry is priceless. Grandmother had tons of rope lines in her yard. My mother had a pully from the house that you could swing from. I did not have a dryer until my youngest son was 2 and almost trained.
A neighbor hooked it up for us and didn’t I take those diapers outside to hang. It was mid April and some warm, sunny days. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t use that dryer immediately. I was addicted to the fresh air aroma. I do remember my grandmother beating those rugs. Now that’s giving my age away. Love your Blog.
Ah, the sensation of putting your toes between freshly air dried sheets is one of life’s treasures. You can’t beat the feel of drying off after a shower with a towel from the same line. How I miss those days and always hope we’ll come to our senses and allow them back into our lives.
I often wonder where it all started, the Muffy and Bif mentality that declared drying clothes in fresh, clean air is somehow ugly and a major cause of declining property values. Ya know, if everyone could do it, then all properties would be equal, and voila, no problem.
And it’s all free! And clean. The alternative certainly is not. And in this time, it is so right. To all those who profess to be “green,” and a lover of all things environmental, this should be the simple litmus test of their genuine commitment……how do you dry your clothes?
Don
PS..on a trip to Italy a few years back, there were many sightings of outdoor clothes hangings. The Italians are creative geniuses when it comes to finding places to hang their clothes …. so colorful.
We used to hang our clothes out all year long, often on back porch in winter, or during rainy days. The frozen clothes were always dry by the time we brought them in to thaw out.
And I’m not a 91 one year old grandma [though my mother would be if she were still alive today].