Clothes Lines

For most Americans, the image of freshly laundered clothes hanging in the breeze, soaking up the warmth of the sun, evokes the feeling of a quaint bygone era. Today, the crude imitation of “fresh spring breeze” scent that comes from a dryer sheet would be about as close as most people get when it comes to drying their clothes outside. In the US, not only are clothes dryers part of the standard household appliances, in many parts of the country where home owners associations rule with an iron fist, clothes lines in the backyard are actually illegal. They somehow have come to be associated with poverty, are considered eye sores, and thus, have a negative impact on property values. People throughout the country have to fight tooth and nail the get the “right to dry” law passed.

In Australia, that stigma associated with clothes lines in the backyard never seemed to have existed. Clothes lines like this one in the backyard of the house I am renting are not only a standard fixture in almost all single homes in Australia, they often are placed right in the middle of the open yard as the most prominent feature. Neighbors don’t grumble about having to look at your skivvies flapping in the wind; no one hyperventilates over being mistaken for living in a poor house because of the clothes line in the back.


Being the stingy greenie that I am, I absolutely embrace the clothes line for saving me money and being good to the environment. Yes, it takes longer to hang the clothes up on a line than simply throwing them into the dryer and push a button. But I look at it as part of my morning stretches. Yes, the weather dictates when I can do my laundry. If it rains on my day off, I just wait until the next dry day; I have plenty of underwear and socks. Worse comes to worst, if I really need to do laundry when it is raining, I hang them up on a foldable drying rack under the patio cover. On nice sunny weekends, my morning sometimes starts with the ritual of me standing out in the yard under the warm sun, with blades of grass between my toes, pinning the wet laundry up on the spinning rack. I then go out to do whatever for the day, not having to worry about my clothes getting wrinkled for sitting in the dryer all day. In the afternoon before the sun sets, the clothes are ready to be taken down. The wind has done the ironing for most of the clothes. And that smell of fresh air and sun soaked into the clothes just feels so – natural.

I just heard the washing machine buzz. Better go hang them up.

A bee visiting the flowers in the yard