By Jean Ponzi
Clothesline Solar Power
On my clothesline, sun rays dry FREE on fine as well as freezing days. Fun Fact: stiff dry blue jeans thaw out nicely.
My original line wound around three trees. When two died, I got new lines, custom husband-made, on green metal poles over stepping-stones. Spiffy!
Line-drying is simply smart. Shrinks utility bills and carbon emissions, not your shirts. Fabrics will last longer and clothe you freshly, truly fragrance-free. Plus you get some unplugged Nature moments. Maybe you’ll want to hang out there more?
I’d be “on the ropes” without my clothesline, especially if I lived in any of nineteen states that restrict ‘em. HOAs – Homeowner Associations – mostly enforce these bans, and they can really hang you out to dry.
Neatnik neighborhoods that judge clotheslines “unsightly” fear your towels will block views and soak property values. Objectors raise safety concerns: clotheslines can pose tripping hazards. What? That would drop your pants in dirt.
Advocates for Right to Dry pin their campaigns to solar panels. State-level Solar Rights Acts standardize clean energy logic that washes out bans, because clotheslines are solar-energy dryers!
Line by line, this movement is evaporating “norms” that prioritize arbitrary looks over sensible rights and sustainable practice.
So . . . what can you do if you launder under a clothesline taboo?
Check your HOA or municipal rules. Many are unenforceable. Converse with your neighbors! Negotiate! Chances are good you’ll find folks who’ll hang with you to challenge a ban.
Meanwhile, use retractable clotheslines or portable drying racks and take ‘em down when not in use.
Hang indoors near windows. Where the sun shines, cloth will dry!
Hedge your bet: run lines (discreetly) behind your native bushes. Ask forgiveness, not permission.
Clotheslines have efficiently held their own across cultures and over time.
When I visited Italy, every balcony of every tenement and home flew laundry as proudly as national flags. So much Italian wash on lines! I wondered if anybody owned a dryer?
From black lingerie to flowered curtains, clean goods hung on vivid display. Clotheslines stitched medieval streets into a tapestry of human life, magnificent and ordinary.
My Grandma hung her wash out. Her line ran like guitar strings, six parallel stretches between her house and the whitewashed clothesline rail Grandpa built, with double knobs topping his posts. She propped up those long lines with bamboo poles, holding high even their big-bed sheets.
I keep a length of Grandma’s cotton clothesline, reeled on the heavy wooden “H” that Grandpa sanded smooth enough for little helper hands.
For fun, I hang our stuff in symmetrical patterns: Hand towel – dish towel – washcloth – dish towel – hand towel – repeat! Shirts are solids from my husband Dale, stripes and flowers for me.
Outdoors in sunshine, I bob and turn, shake out wrinkles, reach and pin.
Clothesline solar power!
Green Jean Ponzi is a longtime local voice for Earth, through her work for the EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden and community radio features, now on our new internet station Community Radio STL. Dig her Earthworms Castings commentaries at www.CRSTL.FM.