Blogging the WSJ: The Right to Dry

Back when we were holding tryouts for editors for the Green Home site, Stephanie took this photo and wrote a (fantastic!) post about a cool green throwback -clotheslines. 37 comments later, the dust settled. While the positive comments definitely outweighed the negative, we could see that it was a practice that got some people bent out of shape.

And now, what the WSJ calls "the burgeoning right to dry movement" has a poster child, Susan Taylor.

posted originally from: AT:Chicago

Ms. Taylor has been using a clothesline to dry her laundry. It is "one way to fight climate change, using the sun and wind instead of electricity. "Days like this, I can do multiple loads, and within two hours, it's done," said Ms. Taylor. "It smells good, and it feels different than when it comes out of the dryer."

Makes perfect sense, but her neighbors are not happy.

"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor's clothesline. "It can't possibly increase property values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood."

And it seems that Ms. Grundeman's thoughts are widespread.

"...as postwar Americans embraced labor-saving appliances, clotheslines came to be associated with people who couldn't afford a dryer. Now they are a rarity, purged from the suburban landscape by legally enforceable development restrictions."

It's just those restrictions that have come into play for Ms. Taylor - her housing development's managers have threatened legal action.

For the full story from the Wall Street Journal, click here.

For more info on air drying laundry: Project Laundry List

Comments (4)

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Good on Susan and Stephanie!

Save us from the snobs who put form before function and looks before life. I'd rather see a lively balcony full of plants and drying clothes than the cold, sterile aesthetic associated with "high" design.

I think the "no clotheslines" rule comes from a sense that drying clothes outdoors is "lower class"--and thus a huge no-no in affluent towns like Bend, Oregon. I noticed a similar attitude with my mother about being able to use prepared foods (Jell-O, cake mixes, Hamburger Helper, Sloppy Joe mix, etc.). Now we realize that many prepared foods aren't that healthy and tend to cost more than making food from scratch, but to my mom, who grew up in the Depression, I suspect they were a way of showing her middle-class status.

I started using a drying rack this winter when I was merely trying to save my pennies while job hunting. Since I live in a triplex with a shared laundryroom, I set it up in my bathtub. I also have a retractable clothesline that I mounted under my shower head which hooks to the opposite end of my shower curtain rod. (I have an L-shaped curtain rod since the curtain wraps around two sides of my bathtub.) Mine is similar to this one.

I've had my eye on old-fashioned wall-mounted wooden "dryers." A friend's parents had several of these in their living room (close to the woodstove) in northern Michigan. Theirs were stained and looked sculptural when folded down and not in use. They did a good job of drying clothes in the winter.

booo(!) on wicanders cork for posting a self-promotion-type post here. kindly post on Open Threads or on relevant flooring posts rather than on random ones such as this one about CLOTHES DRYING.