Line drying- the minutiae of life.
In the Venetian wayMy dear husband was strolling around our back garden/yard when he overheard a conversation between two of our neighbours. Neighbour 1 was hanging her clothes out, using a drying rack (to catch the wind and sun) on her deck to dry her clothes. Neighbour 2 seeing her doing this called out, "If you need to dry things, just bring them over, we have a dryer." Neighbourly + friendly? Neighbour 1 graciously thanked her but the tone of her voice suggested to my husband, that she found the notion as absurd as he did - summer, why the hell are you using a dryer?
Now, there was alot of "it's summer, it's warm, there's a light breeze - it doesn't put CO2 into the atmosphere" style ranting from my bloke when he came inside. I agreed but then voiced that some people (and in some instances, local by-laws and the like) don't like seeing the mechanics of living (or their neighbours' underwear) flapping in the breeze, obscuring views and so on. The response to that was "Yeah, but those same people go to Venice and take pictures of clothes drying across canals, thinking it's picturesque." Good point.
Line drying is good for you, your clothes and the environment* and in the Blue Mountains it's especially good- you dry your clothes amongst eucalyptus, acacias and pines etc. (I'm not a fan of the radiata pine but in their defence they do smell good). The scent of your laundry dried in such a way is to be appreciated and can't be replicated by any manufactured thing. It's up there with home grown carrots....we pulled one out yesterday. Sorry, no pictures. It was eaten in a flash.
*Every small bit counts and more importantly, helps prevent that terrible hopelessness.
posted by Nada at 13:21
3 Comments:
Oh...one of my pet hates. Really, in this country (especially over the last five years where rain is so infrequent) why would anyone need a dryer. What a waste of energy.
I dry my clothes on the line. And if it's inclement, on a drying rack upstairs where it's warm.
Just like my mum used to do before there was such a thing as a clothes dryer.
In days when ironing sheets was de rigeur, my ex's grandmother refused, saying that she liked to fold the sunshine in. Should be more of it :)
Kathy (James' Mum)
anaglyph - All too true. We have a dryer but we don't really use it. The few times I've 'needed' a dryer I could have gone to the laundromat. We bought when we first moved up here because we thought it would be too cold + wet for the clothes to dry. Well, that hasn't been the case especially in the last few years. I really wish we hadn't bought it.
Kathy - "Folding in the sunshine" - I love that. What more needs to be said?
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