Am I the only person in the world that still line dries clothes? No, I don’t always do it, sometimes I’m lazy, sometimes I don’t want to go out in the cold, but most of the time, I love the look of clothes drying on the line. I love the smell when I take them down. I also love that it’s easier on my electric bill and the environment. I try to do my part.
Apparently drying your clothes outside has gone the way of the dodo bird. Last week I was hanging laundry outside and my neighbor to the north saw me and asked if I wanted to use her dryer. After I explained to her that I was hanging laundry out by choice and she went back inside, my neighbor to the south came out. Is your dryer broken? That was her first question. Once again I explained that I hung laundry on the line because I love it, and because it saves money. Jamie looked at me like I had a few screws loose so I explained to her that this is how people used to dry clothes.
I have young couples on each side of me; both the girls are stay at home moms with young children. Jamie was amazed that I was doing all this work, by choice. She voiced her opinion that with three kids under six she was certainly glad that she didn’t have to hang laundry. I started explaining to her the picture in my head from my childhood. Backyards with clotheslines, sheets flapping in the wind, cloth diapers hanging out to dry, all the cute kids’ clothes lined up drying.
Jamie kind of shrugged and went back to what she was doing when she first came out of the house. I thought about my first apartment when I was eighteen, we had neither a washer or dryer and there were times when not only did I hang laundry to dry, but I washed it by hand in the tub because we didn’t have a car to take us to the Laundromat or money to wash the clothes once we got there. I remember when I had my first washer and dryer. I felt like a real grown up, no more line drying for me.
Now I’ve come full circle. I have a washer and dryer in the basement and I don’t think anything in this world would make me hand wash clothes again, but hanging them out to dry is a totally different story. I think everyone should sleep on line dried sheets at least once. However, it is addicting and when you smell those sheets when you crawl into bed at night you will never want to dry them in the dryer again.