I Love My Clothesline

This may not actually be news.  I've professed my love of the clothesline before.  I've even admitted to standing in my kitchen, gazing out the window at the clothes blowing on the line.  Some people like to watch fish in an aquarium, I like to watch cloth move in a breeze.  It relaxes me.

I thought some other people might be contemplating the clothesline for environmental and/or economic reasons, so I thought I'd share some of the benefits I've observed this summer. I- or rather, Russ and my dad- put the line in last fall actually. I used it into November because the autumn was so mild.  I opened it up again this April.  I believe that give me three different seasons of experience with it.

First, because money is so convincing, it does save you actual money that you can see on your bill.  Although, it might make more sense to compare kilowatt hours instead of dollars because the market is not a stable thing.  I compared my kilowatt hours from last May to this May (my most current data) and found that I had decreased my usage by 4.2 KWH.  You can't quickly change that to $ because the KWH are charged at different rates depending on the time of day that they're used.  What's even more interesting about this number is that during the same time I was running my new pool filter and heater!  We also added in a few more fluorescent bulbs, but not using the dryer was the big change.

Another plus to my clothesline is that I can get through the laundry more quickly.  Everyone knows that a load of laundry spends more time in the dryer than in the washer, but with the clothesline I can dry two and sometimes three loads at a time.  On a nice day I can dry clothes as fast as I can wash them.  I also find that I get the laundry folded sooner, but this might because of the pool.  I have to be out in the backyard so much anyway to lifeguard, that I find I have time to fold the clothes as I take them off the line.

I also love the smell of the clothes that have been on the line, and this benefit only gets stronger as the weather gets colder.  This spring I pulled out a shirt that had been dried on the line last Fall and it smelled as fresh and crisp as that Fall day. I'm a smeller and so that joy lifted my whole day.  I know that you can get good smells from fabric softener, but this just does something different for me.

I don't know that this last thing will sell a lot of people on the clothesline, but it is important to me.  The clothesline brings me back into the rhythm of the natural world.  Be honest, unless you're planning a picnic or a soccer game, the weather doesn't really connect with your real life. If it's too hot or too cold or too wet, you just go into your climate controlled building.  With the clothesline I have to actually work with the weather.  I have to plan my life, to a small degree, around how the weather is going to work out.  I see that as a plus, not a minus. It is being shown by people who study these things that a disconnect from the natural world is having a profound negative impact on children and adults.  

I also am more aware of the seasons and what the natural world is like during the seasons. Last Fall, for the first time ever, I really noticed the changing path of the sun through the sky as winter loomed closer.  I could see the angle of the light on my clothes changing each week. It just serves to remind me that there is a whole world that I am a part of, not the point of.

There are some challenges to the clothesline, but I figure there are to the dryer too.  If you want to give it a try, but are wondering how I worked out- or learned to live with- some of those challenges, let me know and I'll try to answer your questions.  For now, any little step you take to live more with Creation and not to just use Creation is a good step.