More Clotheslines, Please

After you do your part to control global climate change by slowing down on the highway, you can do even more by hanging your laundry out to dry. According to this editorial...

Clothes dryers account for 6 to 10 percent of household energy use and emit up to a ton of carbon dioxide each year.



But some homeowners associations have a no-clotheslines rule, apparently, so as not to offend the aesthetic sensibilities of the neighborhood. Personally I like the way laundry looks on the line, but that may be because of my age and the era I grew up in.


In Connecticut, meanwhile …

The Sierra Club and others are proposing a bill for the upcoming legislative session that would prohibit restrictions on the use of clotheslines. Such "right to dry" laws are being proposed in many states, and have been passed in a few.

Slow down and hang your clothes outside.What’s next? Forsake your leaf blower for a rake? Not a bad idea either.

(The painting above is called Shadow Decoration, by Charles Courtney Curran; you can see it at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, at Vassar; the photo is of my laundry.)