This diary was actually the idea of Seedy Character and was written collaboratively by Seedy and AZnaturegrrrl.
Maybe those of us who thought irony had died a few years back were a little hasty because, in this week when “Moses” Johnson and his dwindling band of ne’er-do-wells in the House had intended to tackle the urgent business of the HOOHAA (the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act: (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/15/2235348/-House-postpones-Appliance-Week-to-focus-on-things-that-actually-matter?pm_source=ICYMI&pm_campaign=ICYMI04162024)––there being nothing else going on right now of more concern to your average Republican––April 19th is actually National Hanging Out Day. Yes, friends! A day dedicated to getting people motivated to allow nature to run its breezy caress through their damp laundry.
Some weeks ago, in a comment thread on some completely unrelated topic, Seedy Character and AZnaturegrrrl discovered a mutual passion for clotheslines, clothespins/pegs, and fresh-air laundry-drying. We were told to take our chat elsewhere, so we did––where we pooled our experiences and knowledge on the subject to bring you this “green” message amid some fond memories of a simpler world.
We came at this from complementary perspectives––AZnaturegrrrl covets clothes pegs (the British term for clothespins) and loves to put her collection to use during the summer, while Seedy is a bit of a proselytizer for the line-drying cause and pretty much line-dries year round. “Pretty much” as in, she isn’t an air-drying purist. Ironically, Seedy’s grandson dropped by the other evening with an urgent need to have clean clothes. So, as Seedy was assembling this diary on the virtues of line-drying, her machine dryer was whirling and thumping nearby.
Anyway, come wash nostalgic with us. Join us in airing our not-at-all-dirty laundry. Resources galore are in store! We’d like to read about your clothesline memories, stories, tips, and such in the comments.
To begin, some nostalgia…
Seedy Character here. In 1954, my dad used his GI home loan to buy a $500 lot in Monterey, California, on a sunny hill where a hog farm had stood a few years before, along with a few tons of adobe bricks. My father Charlie and Grandpa Charles spent months building a small post adobe house on the plot, laboring in the evenings after work and on weekends. My mom told me that as soon as the plywood flooring was nailed down, she carried me in in my bassinet, set me down, and got to work herself. The walls were built, brick-by-brick around me. The clothesline’s metal posts were anchored in concrete in the back yard, and its six lines were strung up soon after. Seventy years later, that clothesline still stands tall, still secures the clothes pinned on it, and still holds its decades of memories. My first memories were sensual ones––being mesmerized by the sight of garments swaying, at first wet and heavily, then, as they dried, lightly, lithely. In a stiff wind, they whipped about, snapping loudly, as though angry, desperate to be freed from their pins. Sometimes they succeeded––I recall finding rogue socks up against the fence, hankies snagged in the bushes. And then there was the intoxicating sweet scent of the sun baked into the sheets, the towels, into all the fabrics. I loved burying my face in the laundry basket’s mountain of folded clothes, just to breathe in that smell.
Beyond the sensuality and utility of that sturdy clothesline was the fun of fashioning a big tent out of two sheets pinned together to a line with adobe bricks at the bottom edges. I spent countless hours with friends under those stiff linens, playing all kinds of games, naughty and nice. Overnights in the clothesline tent with flashlights, ghost stories, and my dad making growling noises outside were especially thrilling…
Sheet tents––every kid should experience at least one! AZnaturegrrrl here. My first memories are from the 1960s, which is when I first seem to have become maybe a little obsessed with pegs (yes, I have a peg collection)! The ones from my early childhood are wooden dolly pegs. My granny used these to hang out our sheets and pillow-cases and dresses on washing day (always Mondays!), on waxed-rope lines that criss-crossed our west-facing back garden, from a line tied at one end to a red-painted pole by the honeysuckle and chives at the front of the garden, obliquely across to a hook halfway down the red-brick garage, skirting the weathered-copper sun dial set on a concrete plinth, then back over the rose bed, past my swing to another pole, brown and rusted and virtually invisible, set among the hydrangeas. We’d hang all the washing and then use poles with notches in the end to hoist the lines up into the sky. The washing was always taken in by the time the elms at the back of the garden started throwing their shadows on the lawn. When I was very young, I had my own line, set three feet off the ground, right at the front of the garden, and some baby dolly pegs (sadly no longer in my possession). I was in charge of underwear. For an Aspie kid, this was right up my alley––matching up socks and stockings and spacing them equally, orienting undies just so. Happy times…
We didn’t have a dryer back in the 1960s, and certainly neither my granny nor my mum ever owned a tumble-dryer. Our washing was done in a top-loading tub with a to-and-fro paddle, the water added by a hose attached to the kitchen faucet and drained by gravity from the bottom of the tub out into the garden. It was a several-hours task. After rinsing the washing (no fabric softener), it went through the wringer––two rubber cylinders you pushed the clothes between while turning the crank handle on the side, like making sheets of pasta. It usually took a couple of goes to get the water out, but it was effective.
In summer, the washing dried quickly and smelled of fresh air and sunshine. In winter, it was still damp when we brought it in, smelling of the cold and a little of coal-fire smoke, but then we would iron it dry till it smelled toasty and felt crisp, and hang in to air from the airing rack we lowered via pulleys from the kitchen ceiling, which we loaded up and hoisted back up there. In the next phase of my life, in the 1970s, when we didn’t live with my granny, we graduated to wooden spring-loaded pegs and the umbrella type of line, like the one Seedy has now.
After a long break of university campus living and then a brief spell in my first house, it wasn’t until the 1990s, when I had a garden flat in London, that I started up the line-drying again. It was a small courtyard garden that would only accommodate a short line, this time a retracting one attached to the brickwork at the side of the flat, but I augmented this by using drying racks. Oh, yes, I also have a collection of drying racks, my favourite being the oak one that’s like the one my granny used to dry our undies on by the fire in the winter––three wooden “gates” hinged with fabric so you can set it up zig-zagged or as three sides of a square. It was a trip to Greece (the island of Meganisi) and the purchase of some very cheap, super-colorful plastic pegs in a grocery store that really got me back into line-drying in earnest. That and the gift of a bottle of lavender-scented fabric softener from The Good Home Co. (https://goodhomestore.com/collections/laundry/products/laundry-fragrance-refills?variant=35127036111) from my former MiL––soooo nice for bedding (they also do a fresh-cut-grass–scented one that I use for my summer clothes). The smell lasts better with line-drying and is nicer smelling than the synthetic fragrances most people are used to these days. Soon after, I indulged in some more colorful, but also bird-shaped!, pegs on a trip to a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds sanctuary with friends, which I thought would look cute on the line (they do!). And then there are the ones with roses on…
And now, here I am living in Houston, with another retractable line (in defiance of the HOA diktat against line-drying!) strung under the porch just outside my back door, which just so happens to lead into the laundry room. It makes me sad (and angry) when I think about the HOA restrictions. There are plenty of countries you can travel to where people’s laundry is on display––think Italy and France, where people living in apartments string lines high above the streets––so continental! I use my pegs and think of long-ago summers, good times with friends, long-lost loved ones, foreign travel… And also how technology can make things faster, but that doesn’t always mean better.
If it’s not obvious by now, I attach happy memories to things––it’s been a major coping mechanism through my life, having being “gifted” with life-long depression. I can conjure up minute details and overall feelings when I’m hanging out my washing… while also saving money and giving the planet a little extra time. Maybe it’s time for you to do the same, or to start making those types of memories for you and your children or grandchildren?
So, are you ready?! Feeling clothesline curious and want to learn more about how to use your dryer less and a clothesline more? Ready for Seedy’s exhaustive (though not exhausting, line-drying being energizing!) and passionate treatise, in which you’ll find the basics of cool-washing, line-drying, and airing––the whys and how-tos? Plus lots of links to resources for the uninitiated!
But first, a disclaimer… While we may have lapsed into romanticizing the air-drying of clothes in our nostalgia section, we want to clarify that we are not advocating a return to washboards, wringer-washers or air-drying for everyone all the time (lord, no!). The invention of machine washers and dryers was time and labor liberating for millions of (mostly) women around the world. But now, in the midst of a climate crisis of our own making, many of us are actively working on reducing our personal carbon footprint, which includes looking at ways to make our laundry less hydrocarbon-dependent.
Line-drying 101: Why? How? Where?
In 1995, Project Laundry List (a nonprofit no longer in existence, although the website and a Facebook page still remain: http://laundrylist.org/index.html) and other organizations declared and promoted April 19th as National Hanging Out Day to encourage communities to learn about the financial and environmental benefits of making cold-water washing and the air-drying of laundry acceptable and even desirable as simple and effective ways of saving energy. They also succeeded in passing right-to-dry laws in several states (more on that below).
Tips for decreasing the need to wash and dry
*Freshen your clothes by airing rather than washing them between each use. You’ll be amazed at how well it works: https://inthewash.co.uk/laundry-and-ironing/airing-clothes-instead-of-washing/
*Spilled some tea on your shirt? Spot clean it in a jiffy. No need to wash the whole garment. Martha shares her secrets to effective spot cleaning here: https://www.marthastewart.com/7972852/spot-cleaning-tips
*Fold back your bed linens to air them. Change your pillowcases often, but not the sheets so much if you sleep in jammies, don’t share your bed with a dog and/or several cats, and aren’t performing wild, messy activities between the sheets––seriously, eat your crumby buttered toast at the breakfast table, you savage!
*Use cold water to wash most of your laundry. Heating water for clothes washing is the most energy intensive part. And clothes turn out great in cold washes. More here: https://wapo.st/3VYKOXv
Why line dry?
It’s free! Dryer usage can amount to around 6–10% of your energy bill, and on hot summer days and nights, powered dryers add more heat to your home, which requires your A/C to work extra hard, also driving up utility costs.
It’s fast! Really! Once you get the “hang” of it (wink, wink), you can get a load of laundry up in just a few minutes––say, 15. Well, possibly 20 in a brisk wind.
It’s green! Air drying involves no fossil fuels, nuclear energy (well, unless you count the sun…) or coal consumption. It’s solar and wind power up close and personal.
Facts: one of the biggest energy hogs in a household, besides the AC/heating unit, is the clothes dryer, requiring an average of 5 kWh per load. Compared to clothes washers, which only use an average of 500 W per year, a powered clothes dryer consumes an average of 5,000 W per year (https://www.clotheslines.com/why). GreenAmerica has estimated a carbon footprint saving of 2,400 lb/year for the average US family if you line-dry.
Air-drying is good for your health and happiness! Pinning/pegging clothes to a line––especially outside––is a glorious tonic for the body, mood, and spirit. And a salve for your climate-crisis angst!
Morning sunshine helps reset your circadian clock, which in turn lets the wake–sleep cycle function more smoothly. Wash and hang your clothes out early!
Line-/air-drying gives you a bit of sun exposure, the perfect amount to make some vitamin D3. Roll up your sleeves and soak up the rays—multitask!
Sunlight and outdoors time increase serotonin and help stave off seasonal affective disorder (don’t be SAD!).
The Japanese expression “shinrin-yoku” translates to “forest bathing”––an invitation to take a break from your busy life and connect with nature. The simple act of hanging out clothes, watching them waft and flap as they dry in the breeze, inhaling their unique fresh scent, and then folding them into a basket, can be a calming, nourishing ritual. After you’ve spent a few minutes pinning up or folding your clothes, sit a spell nearby, have a refreshing drink, relax, reflect, revive…
Hanging clothes on the line can make for family fun. Let kids pin their clothes in wacky ways––no matter how they’re hung, they’ll all eventually get dry. Have a washing and line-drying morning! Raise your kids’ consciousness about the effort of making soiled clothes clean. Displace any laundry resentments with positive connecting time!
Even if it’s a modest, personal action, line-drying clothes helps combat climate anxiety and dread. There you are, using sunshine and wind to dry your clothes. It’s a small effort, but “mony a mickle maks a muckle” to the planet when you save energy.
You don’t have room? Get an umbrella line on your back deck, like Seedy, or run a short line under the porch outside your back door, like AZnaturegrrrl. Both of us often have these filled with drying laundry when friends come to visit. You could inspire other people to string up a line of their own––set an example!
It’s safer! Clothes dryers can be fire hazards. Highly flammable lint can get stuck in ducts and trigger fires. Overloading and overdrying at high heat can cause fires. Tips to reduce dryer-caused fires here: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/tips-to-prevent-fires-that-start-with-clothes-dryers/#:~:text=If%20a%20dryer%20is%20forced,dryer%20had%20been%20shut%20off
Unlike machine-drying, air-drying is easy on your clothes. Sunshine’s UV light is nature’s disinfectant, deodorizer, and stain remover. And don’t worry, dark clothes hung in the shade or turned inside out, or hung indoors, won’t fade.
Clothes will last longer and fit better. Using too much heat in machine dryers will shrink your clothes, set stains, pill fabrics, and generally wear them out quickly (all the fire-starter lint in the lint trap is bits of fabric that have sloughed off your clothes).
Think you can’t line-dry? Think again!
You have an illness or mobility disability. If you’d really like to line dry, there may well be a drying rack or line option that works for you and your strengths and limitations. Many outdoor clotheslines can be installed low or high. Racks can be set up indoors or outdoors so that clothes can be added or removed at wheelchair height.
An umbrella/rotor or pulley-type line (see types below) allows you to stand in one spot and pin laundry, rotating or pulling to a new section once you’ve filled up one part. To avoid bending, add a table beside the umbrella or pulley line for the laundry basket. Set up an umbrella line on a sturdy surface, such as a deck, rather than in a lumpy lawn where falling is more likely.
Choose a laundry basket that’s easy for you to carry outside.
You have pollen allergies? Do not despair! Watch the pollen forecast on your weather app or at pollen.com. Switch from outdoor to indoor air-drying on heavy pollen days. If you have a machine dryer, you can remove pollen from clothes after a few minutes on the “air” setting.
Your weather is unpredictable. A quick peek at your favorite weather app will let you know the best day to line dry. This week, Seedy waited two days until the weather heated up into the mid-70s before she hung a load of washing. A little planning––easy peasy!
Your climate is very humid. AZnaturegrrrl line-dries in Houston where the humidity can feel like you’re breathing water––it’s quite possible to air-dry clothes outdoors in humid or wet climates. And you can always help out still-damp washing by ironing while watching a movie. And for those of you, like Seedy, whose irons have become doorstops, indoor fans and room dehydrators can help reduce humidity and get the clothes dry. Plus, if you have a machine dryer, there’s no crime in using it for a few minutes to get the last bits of moisture out.
On rainy or snowy days, you can use a rotary/umbrella clothesline cover outdoors. You can switch to indoor drying with racks near your heat source. Why use a powered clothes dryer and discharge the heat outdoors when you can get the triple benefit of heating the people, the critters, and drying the clothes at the same time?! WikiHow takes you through the steps: https://www.wikihow.com/Dry-Clothes-in-a-Humid-Climate
Your living space is too small. People around the world in all sizes and types of dwellings air-dry their clothes. Creativity is the key! Shower bars and plastic hangers and the ceiling fan allow for air-drying in the bathroom. Tension bars, ceiling racks, foldable racks, retractable lines make it work. Open your windows and use fans for air circulation for indoor drying. Small patios, back balconies, garages/carports, basements, and porches may also be options. Lifestyle Clotheslines shows you how: https://www.lifestyleclotheslines.com.au/blogs/news/how-to-air-dry-clothes-in-a-small-apartment#:~:text=Use%20a%20folding%20rack%2C%20retractable,and%20taking%20longer%20to%20dry
Your HOA forbids it? We touched on this above––even if you’re not allowed, you, too, can be a rebel! More than half of the US population––about 54%––lives in states that have right-to-dry laws that block HOAs and condo associations from prohibiting your clothesline. Even in states with right-to-dry laws, some restrictions on the use and placement of clotheslines are likely, however. In California, for example, HOAs can still control where your clothesline can be installed, and even what type of clotheslines are allowed. Learn more about right-to-dry issues and the states list as of 2019 here: https://www.bestdryingrack.com/right-to-dry-laws.html
If you’re not in a right-to-dry state, contact your state and local representatives and let them know that you’re concerned for the environment (unless this will elicit hate mail). As “green” laws and initiatives become more prominent and viable, legislators may be/become inclined to listen to your concerns. Ultimately, pushing “greener” laws may make them look good (although we know there are legislators who will think the opposite). Helping the environment, appeasing concerned citizens––these might get them votes (https://soapboxie.com).
You can watch the right-to-dry movement in action here: https://youtu.be/BZC8YfYvov0
Types of clotheslines, racks, and pins/pegs
Rotary/umbrella line: A metal pole fits into a braced, weighted patio umbrella stand or into a sleeve in the ground. The metal spokes resemble those of an inverted umbrella. Easy to pin up the clothes standing in one place. A lot of clothes can fit in a compact area. There are some pricey, high-end models but Seedy has had a just-fine, basic Everbilt (Model 41135) for many years that cost just $60.
Posts and lines: This is the classic type that was erected in suburban and rural yards all around the country decades, even centuries, ago. Those wood or metal posts and lines may still be standing erect, or may be slouching, but still proud of their years of loyal service. They’re ideal for large families with lots of laundry. Bonus––you rack up plenty of steps walking up and down the rows and get sleek abs from bending and stretching from laundry basket to overhead line!
Racks: Standing racks are a low-profile, foldable option that can be used indoors and out. Metal and wooden types abound––choose small, tall, short or wide. Ideal for keeping your undies out of sight of HOA overlords, vigilantes, and nosy neighbors!
Retractable lines: A space-saving and affordable option. A line or lines are pulled out and clipped to hooks or a post mounted yards away. Once retracted, the lines tuck into a sleek container and there’s no evidence of them at all. This is AZnaturegrrrl’s preferred option––aka the stealth line.
Pulley lines: These are the clothesline systems that worked for high-rise urban dwellers back in the day and can still be seen abroad. Criss-crossing lines full of clothes flutter in the breeze over courtyards between adjacent buildings. Now, pulley clotheslines are mostly in private yards and offer ease of pinning.
Pins/pegs: There are three main types of clothespins/pegs––straight wooden ones (dolly pegs), wooden spring-loaded, and plastic spring-loaded. Buy the wide, high-quality spring-loaded types if you’re going with plastic––many modern plastic versions can be cheap and flimsy. Or you might find quality old ones on places like eBay (search for “new old stock”) or Etsy, or find them in old-fashioned mom-and-pop hardware stores. Store wooden clothespins/pegs especially in a bag indoors––they’ll last for years if cared for well (AZnaturegrrrl has a few fancy peg bags for hers…).
Tips on best air-drying techniques: No need to reinvent the wheel. Bob Vila’s Tried. True. Trustworthy Home Advice shows you how: https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-to-air-dry-clothes/
In conclusion
It’s sad that line-drying has gone the way of so many “olden-times” things, that shoving your laundry in a dryer is seen as a better alternative to nature. Yes, a dryer may be less fuss, but your clothes won’t smell as good and you won’t have benefited from all the good things Seedy Character has highlighted. And you won’t ever have a collection of pegs, peg bags or drying racks to rival those of AZnaturegrrrl that you could use as opening gambits to conversations at dinner parties…
We hope some of you will give line-drying a try, and when you do, maybe you could hum this tune to yourself while you’re hanging out your washing. Picture all those beautiful places you might be saving from obliteration by giving your dryer a break for the summer… (And spring, and fall, and winter, says the ever-zealous Seedy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwLrnos-gik