Some have to fight for the right to use a clothesline
Think you know your American rights movements? Make sure your list includes the right to use a clothesline. It has an advocacy group, Project Laundry List, and a campaign, Right2Dry, to convince the Obamas to line dry their laundry on the White House lawn. Clothesline drying is of course an environmentally-friendly alternative to a gas or electric dryer. Who could possibly object to it, and for heaven’s sake, why?
Opponents, however, see clotheslines as flags of poverty that create eyesores and devalue property.
“They’re unsightly by most people’s standards,” said Jeanne Bridgforth, a Realtor with Long & Foster in Richmond. “It gives an atmosphere of decline. You don’t sense you’re in a well-heeled neighborhood when you see people hanging their laundry out to dry.”
Planned communities and condos frequently have covenants that ban or restrict the use of clotheslines. In the Richmond area, restrictions vary — from all-out prohibition, as in Charles Glen in Henrico County, to restricted use, as in Chesterfield County’s venerable Woodlake and Brandermill subdivisions.
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We have a dryer and use it a total of perhaps twice a year. Every time we do I feel like we’re aimlessly pumping the lifeblood out of Gaia’s body.
Righto, Jeanne Bridgforth, realtor with Long & Foster in Richmond — the environment is best accessed by the elite for the sake of being elite (irony, irony). Windmills to power your Jacuzzi? Good. Wind-dried bloomers? Bad.
Thanks for your comments, Bob and Scott. I use a clothesline myself, and the question I get most often is, “Aren’t your clothes crunchy when they dry on a line?” Yes, they are, but only for the first few moments that you wear them. And you can make them less crunchy by using less detergent. That’s my laundry tip of the day.
JHC! “Crunchy” clothes. That’s a big worry? God help such people if a real crisis comes to pass.
Or tell them to try a bit of fabric softener in the rinse cycle and a two-minute air fluff after line drying, Jeff. But not as a pick-up line.
Seriously, though, Scott is onto it. No one anywhere, anytime, anyhow is interested in the slightest reduction in their standard of living. As Jeff said in one his writings, “Remember when ’sacrifice’ was still part of our national lexicon?”
As I mentioned a couple of times elsewhere, Obama isn’t trying hard enough to restore that word, nor “conservation”. At least not yet. But we’re only a couple of moves into the game and he thinks at least 15 moves ahead.
OK, off on my hybrid human-electric bike, eight miles, in place of a car, hoping my thighs don’t chafe on my crunchy clothes.
This is a big problems in some areas, but in others it is not. I have just left clothes outside hanging over a line, and let the rain wash them at night, then the sun dry them in the morning. Ahhh, Iowa.