After after 19 years of living here it recently dawned on me that most folks in these parts don’t possess a washing line.
What? I hear you ask, well it’s true, most households or apartment units have a washer/dryer. That got me delving into asking why people wouldn’t be more eco-friendlier here. I mean why wouldn’t the place that sells more electric cars per capita air dry their clothes? I’d heard through the grapevine that it was in fact illegal to line dry your clothes al fresco.
So I decided to investigate… the first thing I found was a 2009 LA Times article titled: “Is Your Clothes Line Legal?” in which Alexandria Abramian Mott examines a move to bring air drying back in vogue, revealing that that tumble drying accounts for at least 6% of all electricity usage. And real estate broker Margaret Goedeke of Newport Crest, a cluster of beachfront condominiums where open garage doors, flag poles and clothing lines are all prohibited, chimes in: “We’re not even allowed to hang a towel outside…Once in a while we’ll dry something on our deck, but we hide it. We’re very controlled.”
These kinds of rules drove British film producer Steven Lake to make “Drying for Freedom,” a documentary on line-drying in the U.S. that he said is in pre-production.
“The matter of wasted energy is something that draws my attention to this topic,” he said. “But mostly it’s the fact that in America, which to the rest of the world is considered to be the land of the free, citizens are banned from something as simple and silly as hanging out their washing.”
If you own a house with a yard you can do pretty often what you want, unless you belong to a gated community with strict homeowners association guidelines. Condos and apartment buildings are much toucher and routinely ban air drying, forcing some renters and condo owners to post tips about undercover line-drying on websites such as laundrylist.org. A deeper dive led me to discover Project Laundry List, a grass roots organization whose mission statement is ‘making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as simple and effective ways to save energy’. Believe it or not, in 2014 a resolution was passed at the California State Grange convention in San Luis Obispo to legalize air drying laundry across the state. On the basis that, “The clothesline is an easy and cost effective way to bring down energy use and lower the carbon footprint of the individual household”.
The result was that Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill back in 2015 that gave Californians the right to hang their laundry on clothelines. On Jan. 1, 2016, California became a “right to dry” state.
Which brings me back to the real head-scratcher: why do so many people still prefer the smell of a febrile drying sheet to the scent of the fresh and clean great outdoors? Could it be that LA still has one of the biggest air pollution problems? Maybe that clothes or towels especially tend to stiffen more here in California? Perhaps its the critters like squirrels, raccoons are likely to steal or chew that nice new Gucci t-shirt of yours.
A new search sent me to quora.com where I found the following question…”Why do Americans use clothes dryers to dry their clothes, even in the middle of summer?”
Michael Sidney Timpson, Composer, Music Professor answered “I may be one of the best people this question, because I have a lot of experience in this. As someone who has lived in multiple countries in east Asia and am originally from the US, I can tell you there are three appliances that Americans really want: 1) Clothes Dryer, 2) Dishwasher and 3) Garbage Disposal (#4 may be Oven since that is not everywhere too.) Why? It’s a convenience that saves time. I remember one of my Asian friends asking me, “I don’t understand why you need a clothes dryer? I can just hang up my clothes and they are druy overnight…” and my response is, “Really? Overnight? If I put them in the dryer they are dry in less than ONE HOUR!” Also, in fact, NOT everything is dry the next day, some items seem to take almost two days to dry.”
In the end it comes down to convenience. Because Americans tend to work more hours per week than the rest of the civilized world, they don’t want the hassle of having to hang clothes, wait for them to dry and then iron them all afterwards. But speaking personally I do miss the feel and smell of the “Lenor” fabric softener and air-dried sheets blowing free in the wind. Therefore I did my duty this week, went to Target and bought my clothes line, (avec wooden pegs) between pounding the keyboard for this article I am enjoying watching my sheets blowing in the wind, evoking nostalgia for my happy childhood, running through the neighborhood, watching everyone’s sheets (and often underwear too) blowing in the wind…
Cheers!
Craig
