Our basement project continues, and we are without a clothes dryer. The vent had to be disconnected, and -- not wanting to risk carbon monoxide poisoning -- we have been air drying our clothes. I did some searching online for an affordable, portable clothes line and found nothing decent under $150. I could buy a permanent clothes line for far less, the kind that requires sinking into concrete or some other, more permanent installation (for which we have neither the time nor the inclination). So, off to Target for some relatively inexpensive racks.
Hanging clothes out (shaking out the wrinkles, attaching the clothes to the line with wooden pins, taking the dry and fragrant clothes down before the evening dew) reminds me of childhood. My mother and grandmother always hung their clothes out in the summer. I remember running between the sheets in our backyard, between the two, crucifix-like poles. (Once, during a game of ditch, one of the neighbor kids climbed up the pole and sprung upon me as I raced by. In the shadowy half-dark, his oversized t-shirt billowing behind him, he looked like a vampire.)
I like the smell of air-dried clothes, and truthfully it hasn't been as big a pain in the ass as I thought it would be. In fact, it's one of the ways to save energy that many "green" sites and organizations recommend. What surprised me, during my search for clothes lines online, is that there is a small controversy about hanging your clothes out. In fact, it is forbidden in some newer housing and townhome developments, as well as in entire municipalities. Why? Mostly, it's aesthetics: it (supposedly) looks "low-rent."
Are people growing less and less tolerant of one another, or am I just getting cranky in my dotage?
The article is from several years ago, but the same arguments are still being made in current discussions around the web. And I can't just pass it off on those goofy Californians, because even those rational, Labatt-drinking, Coffee Crisp-eating, Gordon Lightfoot-loving Canadians are in on it.
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