Humble and virtuous: the clothesline’s role

Seventy-one years ago this month, my father and mother bought a house. It was definitely not my mother’s dream house. It was big and old and had been abandoned for 17 years. It creaked and groaned in the night and, because she was five months pregnant, the musty smell literally nauseated her. 

It needed just about everything, but the bank wanted it off their books and made my Dad an offer he couldn’t refuse. With baby number four on the way, life in their cramped post-World War II apartment could not continue, so Dad promised my mother that, just as the Russians had five-year plans, they would have their own plan. He would fix up the house, they would raise their brood, and then he would build her a rose-covered cottage.

Long story short: my mother died in that house at age 93. Dad didn’t renege on his promise; it was just that life rolled on. Babies came, grew up, married and brought more babies home. In the end, mom did not want to leave it, even when other opportunities presented themselves. If she were alive today, she would see the fifth generation playing in the yard.

The yard was the neighborhood gathering spot, but it was not just a playground in the early years. It also formed part of the family economy. There was the inevitable kitchen garden, the barrel where waste was burned in the days before we worried about pollution, and a clothesline. 

Today, the garden site is a patio, environmental regulations have eliminated the burn barrel and only the clothesline remains. It’s the only one in the neighborhood and I don’t know how the neighbors feel about it, but as Litchfield County has become increasingly upscale, clotheslines have disappeared from the landscape.

Nationwide, HOAs and some communities have banned them, citing aesthetics and a potential negative impact on property values. Examples abound: One Washington state HOA lumps clotheslines with such outdoor undesirables as “litter, trash, junk… broken or damaged furniture… [and] trash barrels.” An Oregon woman was fined nearly $1,000 for sun-drying her laundry without approval. 

The social pressure to forego clotheslines is so pervasive that 19 states have passed “right to dry” statutes to ensure that ecologically minded homeowners can hang out their laundry in the fresh air.

Now, I do have a dryer. It sits largely unused in the cellar and only a long stretch of rainy or freezing days will force me downstairs to use it. For short periods of inclement weather, I prefer to use a folding rack set up in the guest bedroom. I figure if Abigail Adams could dry her clothes in the East Room of the White House, that solution is good enough for me, too. Happily, with our warmer winters, I can now use the backyard line virtually year-round.

This winter, a falling tree branch broke one of the clothesline poles my father installed decades ago (he had recycled the trunk of a cedar tree he cut down). I was forced to use a dryer until the ground thawed and I could replace it. I hated it. There was no sunshine in my laundry, no smell of the wind in the fabrics. My laundry was limp and lifeless.

My attachment to drying laundry on a line has as much to do with the tactile experience as it does with the environment, but I confess, I do proselytize about the latter. The University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability found that household dryers consume about 3 percent of the nation’s residential energy budget, about six times that used by washing machines. Collectively, dryers cost more than $7 billion to power each year in the U.S., and generating that energy emits more than 27 million tons of carbon dioxide. 

Not only does their energy demand affect the environment; their use significantly shortens the lifespan of clothing. The Earth is experiencing a glut of discarded clothing, with some 92 million tons of textile waste produced globally each year, 85 percent of which ends up in landfills or incinerators. Our old burn barrel pales in comparison with this level of pollution.

Oh, and clotheslines never burn down your house; in the U.S. alone, dryers cause more than 12,000 residential fires annually when lint from those deteriorating clothes catches fire.

Dryers are touted for producing loads of fluffy laundry, a process aided not just by tumbling, but also by additives. In-wash fabric softeners and heat-activated dryer sheets contain powerful combinations of chemicals that are harmful to health, damage the environment and pollute the air, inside and outside your home.

If forced by circumstance to use a dryer, I always avoid the mystery cocktails in fabric softeners and conditioners. Our homes may be filled with environmental toxins, but I don’t see the sense of adding more to the very clothes we encase our bodies in.

Happily, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the use of the clothesline. Technavio Plus issued a Clotheslines Market Analysis and Forecast for 2025 to 2029 that predicts market size will increase by $67.5 million by 2029. Admittedly, much of this is in Europe and other global regions where dryers are less common (the U.S. has 80 percent of dryers internationally), but the report said clothesline use is experiencing significant growth here as well because its “sustainability and eco-friendliness resonate strongly with consumers.” 

Project Laundry List has become the main force behind the “right to dry” movement. Its members believe that Americans use too much energy needlessly, and they work to focus the public’s attention on the stewardship of natural resources and good economics. 

Switch to a clothesline. You can expect to save 8 percent of your energy bill and the little bit of personal energy expended in pinning your clothes to a line will be amply rewarded by a virtuous feeling of harmony with Nature and good old Yankee frugality.

Kathryn Boughton is editor of the Kent Dispatch. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Kent News, Inc., the Dispatch’s parent company.