We're taking a big step here. We're trying not to use our clothes dryer.
We're hanging clothes either on the beautiful clothesline that John and my father in law installed right after Thanksgiving, or on a drying rack in basement. I ordered an extra large wooden drying rack that should be in any day, and I just got some eucalyptus lavender fabric softener. Three sets of solid one-piece wooden clothespins are also on their way, along with a clothespin bag. It's a strange time of year to inaugurate an outdoor clothesline, but we really must give Mervin, my father in law, a job when he comes so he doesn't hog my computer playing solitaire. Also, when I saw the clothesline with cedar posts advertised by the Verm*nt Cl*thesline C*mpany, I simply had to have it. Mervin copied the design from their picture on the web, and bought the cedar locally.
So we're a tiny bit more green. I read that a family will save 100 dollars a year not using the dryer, and a blogger somewhere says she saves 60 dollars a month. I guess it depends on your electricity costs, the size of your family and how you define dirty clothes. Some people apparently just wash everything after one wearing, and even wash bath towels after one day! These are not people who line-dry. When you have to actually hang everything up clothespin by clothespin or hanger by hanger or rack by rack, you begin to set more reasonable standards. My boys just throw everything in the hamper because it's easier, and then I cull. (Of course, a little retraining is in order too.)
Hanging laundry outside, when it isn't too cold, is pleasant, even meditative. Our back yard is very private, which helps. I'm not sure how people around here feel about seeing laundry, not that I care. I do hide certain garments behind big towels, and wonder what that says about me. I guess I do care. Oh, speaking of towels, they end up scratchy, but you can fluff them up in the dryer for 5 minutes if you must. My tactic is to use fabric softener, snap the towels before hanging, and then see if anyone complains about them being scratchy. No complaints yet . . . .
Here is something the poet and memoirist Kathleen Norris wrote about hanging laundry. She lives in North Dakota, where the winters are long and severe. I love this image.
During the unspeakably brutal winter of 1996-1997, with nearly thirty inches of snow on the ground by Thanksgiving, I had had enough by the time the spring blizzards came--another three feet of snow and high winds on the eighth of April--that I set out one morning, ablaze with the warmth of an angry determination, to shovel a path to the clothesline in order to hang something colorful there. As I began to handle the wet clothes, my hands quickly reddened, stung with cold, but it seemed worth doing nonetheless, simply to break the hold of winter on my spirit--and to disrupt the monotony of the white moonscape that our backyard had become. And even though the clothes freeze-dried stiffly and had to be thawed in the house, they had the sky-scent of summer on them. And it helped.
Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work, p.34
We had our first snowfall of the year yesterday, and this is Zane's first snow ever. He licks it up very fast, as if someone is going to snatch it away from him any second. Here is in a rare moment of repose last evening.
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