Sublime Clothes Line

I cannot say what it is exactly that makes hanging clothes up on the line such a sublime experience but for me its true.    Gardening is very rewarding but often dirty and hard work and I dont really enjoy housework.  Yet hanging clothes in the cool morning air, watching the pearly steam rising from the warming clothes and listening to world fee of human noise with just the bird and trees for company is a unique joy unto itself.   I eagerly await the coming of spring and the return to the clothes line every year.

We still send dress shirts and towels though the dryer so they are nicely fluffed, but in this modern world of casual knits, almost every things is better dried on a clothes line.  Drying clothes on the line has several advantages.  You get to enjoy the morning air, save the world and it gives you a change to primp all of the annoying hems and cuffs that fold over and bunch up in the dryer and something that our mothers knew is that the sun is wonderful at sanitizing clothes and bleaching out stains with out the use of chemicals.  We do use the dryer in the dead of winter when its too cold and there is too much rain.  

Its now March and I have returned to my clothes line.  This year the thin plastic brackets on the lines had broken under the weight of some wet towls so I replaced them with some metal brackets and bolts from our drawers.  Repairing things that break is also a big part of green living.  If you dont like the way that towels get crunchy on the line you can tumble them in the dryer for 10-15 mins with something heavy like a pair of jeans to soften them.

In the spring I take great delight in justifying putting off the laundry for one more day based on the weather report.   Procrastination is an important part of green living.  Why consume today what you can instead consume tomorrow (or maybe just never get around to at all).

As I look down the clothes line, I am delighted that I see only 2 shirts (both sentimental) and two pants that came from primary sources.  All of the rest came from secondary sources (thrift, hand me downs, etc.)

I think everyone should own their own solar driven clothes dryer.  Retractable clothes lines are nice if you have a space that needs to serve a dual purpose.  You might also want to consdider putting one line in a sunny space and one in a shady place for darker colors.  We have about 30' of space between the two lines and that serves to hold a full load of laundry.  The average dryer costs about $85/year to run, lasts 18 years  and emits about  2kg of CO2 per load.  Im guessing that we use our dryer about 1/3 of the time and hopefully it will last that much longer.