The Latest Green Energy-Saving Device, The Humble (and Controversial) Clothesline
One of my tasks, as a child, was to help my mom with hanging out the laundry to dry. Sure, we had a dryer and it got used often but so did our clothesline. Growing up in the 70s, in a 1960s subdivision, you didn’t see too many clotheslines. Older homes had fixed poles and lines, like many you see around neighborhoods in and around St. Louis. We had a handy little device, a clothesline that would wind itself up into a coil so it was not seen when not in use. Attached to the back of the house, I’d grab the end and stretch it out to the fence post. Ah, nothing like sleeping on sheets that had been sun dried — something no dryer sheet can compete with. When done, let the line wind itself back up.
Like so many good old fashioned ways of doing things, hanging out clothes to dry fell out of popularity and finally, in many places, outright banned. One in five Americans now live in some sort of community association, such as a co-op, a condo or a subdivision of single family detached homes (per the Community Associations Institute). Many of these ban the drying of clothes in a visible manner. Some municipalities ban outdoor drying of clothing altogether, saving individual associations from having to do so. This age old practice of hanging out clothing to dry is apparently a symbol of poverty and considered a factor in lowering property values.
Now we have groups advocating for “Right to Dry” legislation. Yes, advocates now must seek legislation to protect their right to hang clothing out to dry. Is this a case of sound planning to protect the community from the offenses of drying clothing or police power taken too far?
To me, banning clotheslines is going too far — attempting to sanitize and regulate our lives while consuming more energy. For half a century now various entities have been attempting to strip life from cities — from over zealous sign ordinances to mandates for uniform awnings in commercial districts to bans on hanging the undies out to dry. Despite some give and take in an urban context, I’ll take the messy city life over the sanitized version any day. Just keep the sidewalks passable.
I checked my condo bylaws — they don’t specifically ban the hanging of clothing off the balcony or out the window. Not that I plan to do so, I just wanted to check. I’ve actually been hanging my clothing to dry in the laundry room. A minute in the dryer on a no heat fluff setting once dry gives them a nice bounce. Still, I long for clotheslines strung across the way to the next building from balcony to balcony.
From a recent Wall Street Journal article in September:
Ten states, including Nevada and Wisconsin, limit homeowners associations’ ability to restrict the installation of solar-energy systems, or assign that power to local authorities, says Erik J.A. Swenson, a Washington, D.C.-based partner at law firm King & Spalding LLP, who has written about the policies. He says it’s unclear in most of these states whether clotheslines qualify as “solar” devices. Only the laws in Florida and Utah expressly include clotheslines.Â
I still don’t know where Missouri falls, most likely associations and municipalities are free to ban clotheslines. Anyone know?
From an August 07 article in the Christian Science Monitor:
At last count, in 2005, there were 88 million dryers in the US, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. Annually, these dryers consume 1,079 kilowatt hours of energy per household, creating 2,224 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions.
Wow, that is a lot of energy and emissions. Hanging laundry is one of the simpler ways the public can make a difference with respect to global climate change. We need to maintain rights to hang out laundry to dry. For more information see Project Laundry List.
My mother always did, and still does, use a clothesline to hang-dry all their clothes. At my house, we hang dry almost everything, even though we have one of those giant high-efficiency dryers. Saves us some green, and does a little bit for Mother Nature. It may look a little oogily for a bit, but I think that’s a tiny sacrifice anyone can deal with.
We line dry our clothes/linens at my house. Once the neighbor asked me if our dryer was broken. He had a hard time accepting that even though the dryer worked just fine, we still prefered the sun dried method. It sorta offended him somehow. I love to see people hanging clothes up in my ‘hood, remindes me of what the neighborhood looked like years ago.
If the whole country quit using their dryers and converted to clothes-line usage, it would have no significant impact on carbon emissions. Any such cutbacks cannot make up for the massive increase of emissions from China, India, and the rest of the developing world. It is a useless measure in every way except making one feel like he or she is “making a difference.”
To actually decrease the world’s carbon emissions would require a massive technological change, or austere taxes on producing carbon emissions.
Great article. The Clothesline needs to make a major comeback in this country. I have posted some information about some earth friendly fence products on my site – most notably a great company that produces bamboo for things we used to chop trees down for.
Thanks for the article,
The Fence Wizard
http://www.fencewizard.blogspot.com
We always hang our laundry, inside and out, and sun soaked cotton sheets feel great. It always strikes us as ironic that Americans complain about clothes-lines here but hang quaint pictures of hung clothes in Europe on their walls. Americans are often anti-green by habit and pretensions.
Well Felton, if Americans started using more clotheslines it would make a difference. The China is growing so whatever we do is pointless argument is nonsense!!! The US is still the #1 contributor of greenhouse gases in the world…by far. While China may be putting out more every year, and may someday catch up to us (this isn’t a race), what we put up into the atmosphere still matters, and still has an effect. We can either have a combination of our emissions and Chinas, or just Chinas. While it would be better if China would reduce their emissions, doing what we can in the US would make a huge impact on global warming and energy consumption.
Think of all the fun kids are missing out on not getting to play hide-n-seek in the sheet during the summer. My parents, who don’t live in St. Louis, still use their clotheline – A LOT. They’ve even updated the name of the clothesline to make it sound more modern and green:
solar/air evaporator. I think we could win some legislators by marketing clothes lines w/ the rebranded name.
Whether it would help reduce carbon emissions, I can’t say, but it can certainly help one’s paycheck go just a bit further.
?, you are horribly wrong. From Robert Samuelson:
“In 2004, world emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) totaled 26 billion metric tons. Under plausible economic and population assumptions, CO2emissions will grow to 40 billion tons by 2030, projects the International Energy Agency. About three-quarters of the increase is forecast to come from developing countries, two-fifths from China alone. The IEA expects China to pass the United States as the largest source of carbon dioxide by 2009.
The IEA studied an “alternative scenario” that simulated the effect of 1,400 policies to reduce fossil fuel use. Fuel economy for new U.S. vehicles was assumed to increase 30 percent by 2030; the global share of energy from “renewables” (solar, wind, hydropower, biomass) would quadruple, to 8 percent. The result: by 2030, annual carbon dioxide emissions would rise 31 percent instead of 55 percent. The concentration levels of emissions in the atmosphere (which presumably cause warming) would rise.”
So, you might want to delude yourself into the belief that small actions such as hanging clothes out to dry will help stop climate change, but the problem is far bigger. Global emissions will continue to rise unless we stop development or create new technologies.
The idea that a little thing won’t make a difference is a lame argument. On NPR I heard that clothes dryers are approx. 6% of household energy use–and wouldn’t I want to save that money? I don’t dry my clothes in the sun to be green, frankly, I do it because I’m a scrubby dutch cheap southsider. I don’t dry them in the dead of winter outside, but I do have a basement line for jeans and t-shirts. It doesn’t make sense to use a dryer simply because we can. Especially when sun dried sheets smell so great and sun dried work shirts need almost no ironing at all.
Bridgett, what exactly about my argument is lame? I’m not denying that you can save money by hanging your clothes to dry. I am denying that wiping out the roughly one ton of CO2 emissions caused by US clothes driers each year would have any effect when we are already experiencing climate change at the current rate of 26 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year which will rise to 40 billion tons (in a very optimistic and green scenario) in 20 years.
Very few households have dryers in Finland, even well off households have drying racks in a laundry room. That, along with a Sauna is designed into practically every apartment and home. I was surprised to see this happening, but then everything is recycled in Finland by law, so they are much advanced compared to the US.
If I’m not mistaken hanging laundry is banned in Soulard (does someone know for sure?) I know hanging laundry is discouraged many places around the region.
I was just wondering who Robert Samuelson was, so I looked him up. He seems to be that new breed of relatively conservative / libertarians “journalist” who now accept that global warming is happening, but that the problem is so big, and the solutions difficult, that we would be better off just doing little or nothing. They lost the “debate” on global warming and now they want to keep debate going as to what should be done so that nothing happens. They instill despair in people that the problem is too big for them to handle, making them retreat and do nothing. The only things many of these “journalist†offer is that someday some new technology may save us, so just put your hope in that and don’t worry. These people destroy hope and innovation, not because they feel it is the right thing to do, but because it benefits them to do so.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-roberts/why-does-robert-samuelson_b_57995.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601526.html
http://www.documentedlife.com/log/?p=222
come on, felton. no one is suggesting that JUST hanging clothes out will end climate change. it will take a COMBINATION of many such behaviors. that doesn’t make it trivial. you can’t deny that, all things being equal, emissions DECREASE when a SINGLE person stops using a dryer, for example. it’s a simple math problem. it’s just easier to rationalize away the more difficult choices by convincing ourselves that it won’t make a difference, and then handing the ball to somebody else to develop a magic technology.
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also, i’m not sure how your excerpt above proves that ? is “horribly wrong.” it actually seems to support his comments.
if you don’t care to hang out your laundry for energy-saving purposes, then do it for health purposes… exposure to the ultra-violet radiation of the sun will kill many pathogens left on the materials after conventional laundering.
Our ancestors were onto something without even knowing it back when everything was hauled out of the house for “spring cleaning”!
No matter who Robert Samuelson is or whether you label him a conservative or libertarian, he used IEA figures which demonstrate, as the Huffington Post post acknowledges, that even strident energy-saving measures are not enough to decrease the world’s current rate of CO2 emissions. THERE IS NO DEBATE OVER THIS POINT. Something has to change — the world will either have to sacrifice development or create technologies that will alter our CO2 output. You may want to feel that your tiny gestures, when taken together, make a difference but China (for instance) is erasing your small CO2 savings by the millisecond.
Thanks Felton. I’m going to boycott at least 1/2 of the Olympic TV specials this summer in revolt!
Also, Why do we talk so eloquently about green living and at the same time condemn Larry Rice as a crazy loon?
I love my “solar dryer”! There is an entire Flickr group dedicated to clotheslines:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/322486@N24/
Because Larry Rice is a crazy loon who takes advantage of homeless people for his own gain, without offering them any real services, and housing them in buildings that would be condemned in most of the western world. His lifestyle and current interest in the environment is sustained through his exploitation of our neediest citizens.
“the world will either have to sacrifice development or create technologies that will alter our CO2 output.”
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why “either”? why not “both”? and aren’t WE part of “the world”? i agree, we do, indeed, need to sacrifice some development. you know all those products sitting on all those shelves in all those Wal-Marts (for example) that NOBODY EVER BUYS THAT EVENTUALLY END UP IN A LAND FILL? you know all those woodlands that are leveled for suburban mcmansions in hopes of luring people from their current suburb to a more distant one? well MAYBE those products don’t need to be made in the first place in factories that produces CO2. of course, what will americans do if they can’t shop to alleviate boredom… oh i know, i know – minimum wage jobs will be lost. the economy is a force of nature. yada yada yada. let’s see: jobs. a planet that can sustain life. jobs. a planet that can sustain life. hmmm…
I loved looking out our balcony in Rome and seeing all the laundry hanging from the windows, balconies, etc ….. but if you’re like me and can’t live without your dryer (I’ve worn enough stiff jeans to last me the rest of my life, thank you.), using a gas dryer decreases the energy usage by about 10% and the energy cost by about half. As others have noted, every little bit helps.
When I lived in Dogtown, I’d take my clothes to the laundry mat across the street from where I lived (I don’t think it’s there now). I’d wash them there and then schlep them back to the house and hang them outside. In the summer they’d dry in almost less than an hour. I even dried my clothes outside when visiting my mom when she lived in Arizona, who had a dryer. I can’t understand why more don’t take advantage of hang drying. I currently live in an apartment and I hang dry my clothes in the bathroom, using the shower rod. The only thing I will dry in the dryer are my undies.
I think that Felton’s underlying point is absolutely critical. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into the “feel good,” “I do my part” passiveness that many people do fall in to, then we continue to ignore the hard realities of what is happening, what is necessary, and why. Lifestyle changes are important, and indeed an ethical and practical issue. However, massive economic and social changes in the U.S. (and abroad, independently and by extension) absolutely have to happen to allow for a livable world in the not-so-distant future.
I hang my laundry when weather permits, compost, use minimal heating and a/c, and all that. Good for me. But without taking a hard look at, and challenging, the realities of our joke of a democracy, global capitalism, industrialism, and even technology itself, we might as well say “fuck it” and use our dryers.
Jim, thank you for reading my posts closely and not jumping to the conclusion that I am blaming the world’s ills on China.
I don’t know if its true that people who make changes in their own lifestyle will push for bigger changes. Most of the people on this website are openly hostile to the idea of pushing for major technological change (“Too wishy-washy”; “takes focus off small measures”) or making other serious changes.
I cant argue about any amount of carbon from whatever or anything. I just want to share my latest trick with the laundry. I have an enclosed porch room on the back of my house just like most of other houses in the city. And I have a cieling fan in there. I strung up some clothes line back & forth just below the fan. Hang up the wash, flick on the fan, and PRESTO! I have a semi automatic dryer. I usually hang stuff outside but in damp or humid weather this method gets it dry faster. Then I might toss it in the dryer and switch it to “air only” and tumble it about 5 minutes to get the wrinkles out. The real trick is to string the line up above your head so it can be there permanently and yet out of the way.
Colorado’s governor is doing it: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/dec/27/mansion-defies-bid-to-go-green/
I’m a student at Pomona College in Claremont, California and recently spent a good amount of time looking into clothesline and drying rack options since Pomona is going to purchase some for student use and I wanted to make sure we purchased the best available option.
In my research, I was amazed to find that there is no good website explaining all the different clotheslines and drying rack options. So, I made my own! It’s a wiki page on the Tip the Planet sustainable living wiki that anyone can edit. You can check it out here: http://www.tiptheplanet.com/index.php?title=Air_dry_washing
I’m trying to spread the word so that the site becomes a clearing house for drying rack information, and people have to spend less time scouring the web for the best products. Have a look, share it with your friends, and by all means add your wisdom!
Take care,
Chelsea
My home is one of the last houses not torn down to build a golf course that surrounds our 41/2 acre property. It’s an old farmhouse we are remodeling. We hang out our clothes spring – fall because it saves us energy and I can actually dry my clothes faster by hanging them outside to dry than using my electric clothes dryer. I also love the smell the sun adds to them.
As far as the golf course goes, I actually live in my house and use my land for a garden and fruit tree’s and have a good size garden. I would rather live in my house free will than own a house across the street on the golf course and have the association tell me how to live.
Mary