Airing MyLaundry

A post about laundry . . . the clean kind . . . prompted by recent audio essay on NPR and posts on some other blogs that got me thinking about the "moral rectitude" of the old clothesline method of airing one's laundry.

On the one hand there's my blog friend Heather over at Motherhead lamenting the snooty folk in her Atlanta subdivision who have covenants forbidding the hanging of laundry. She wrote a poem about clothesline fascism.

So now I'm labelled the neighborhood pain,
Our property values down the drain,
I'm subject to a hefty fine,
Because I wanted a *gasp* clothesline.

"How COULD you hang your laundry out?"
The scandal-stricken women shout,
"How would you ever show your face
If people saw your pillowcase?"

Now, I can see it might be wrong
If all I pinned up were my thongs,
But I thought it was a lovely treat
To slip between the sun-dried sheets.

I'm told that only poor white trash
Who don't have dryers from lack of cash,
Would ever think that it was right
To hang their laundry in plain sight.

So I've been told that to fit in,
I must only dry my laundry in,
The way the decent, good folk choose,
This is a battle that I will lose.

It seems that I'm constrained to be
A waster of electricity,
As our planet heads towards carbon doom,
Will the neighbors vote against my broom?

I'll ask our leaders to legislate,
To help try and prevent our fate,
But to sun-dried clothes I'll say goodbye,
It seems I've lost my right to dry.

On the other, there are forward-thinking environmental folks like Eco-Broker Burke Sisco, a guy who actually encourages his clients to ditch electric and gas dryers and hang their laundry outside. He offers his readers a discount on the Breezecatcher, an old fashioned rotating clothes dryer.  He notes:

Indoor electric/gas clothes dryers account for up to 10% of residential energy use. What kind of energy savings could be realized if large numbers of people re-adopted the ancient practice of hanging their clothes outside to dry? How would you like to save 5 -10% on your electric bill every month? With Atlanta's temperate climate it's possible if you're willing to burn a little personal energy.

I get really peeved when we are lauded for recycling, riding our bikes, carpooling etc. under the grandiose banner of "going green" or more pretentiously, SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT.  Please people, our pathetic little efforts to reduce our carbon footprint are noble, but they are not going to SAVE anything. Rather, we should pat ourselves on the back for CHANGING OUR BEHAVIOR, which when done consistently, actually IS something radical and important. The more we retrain ourselves through changed behavior, the more power and potential this movement has.  That's why Bush blew it so badly after 9/11 by not asking us, in the name of Patriotism or national unity, to sacrifice anything on oil consumption, and instead sent us stimulus checks expecting us all to go out and buy more crap we don't need.

The last time I used  an old fashioned clothesline was 20 years ago in my post-college-living-with--my-boyfriend days when home was a little frame house up along the Hudson River.  There I managed a mammoth vegetable garden, cared for 4 dogs, canned peaches and tomatoes every summer and also commuted to a cool advertising job in New York City.  I liked the yin yang of my life -- the whole city mouse, country mouse thing.  As I prepare to move to my little bungalow up the block, I'm wondering if my landlord or my new next door neighbors will freak out if I hang a little laundry on the line this summer. 

What will it take for us to fall in love with laundry lines and the sweet smell of sun-dried clothes again? 

Comments

[HeatherErin]

*Hi-fives to the clothesline posse*

Or something like that. :)