I remember when I was a young girl and my grandmother used to hang our clothes out to dry on a clothes line. I used to help her pull the clothes down off the line and put them into a basket. We would collect the clothes pins and put them in a small cotton bag that my grandmother sewed together. It clipped to the line and would slide down the length of it so you could reach the pins conveniently. What fond memories! Little did I know that we were being eco-friendly. That term didn’t exist back then. We used a clothes line to take advantage of the fresh, clean smell that the outside air gave to our laundry. Companies now try to duplicate that smell in a bottle or a dryer sheet. As iconic as the clothes line was and all-Americana, it is a thing of the past. Housing developments think that clotheslines are eyesores, some even ban them. It’s difficult to use a clothes line when you live in an apartment building or in close housing situations. With our ever-busy society, people are using electric appliances to make the job easier and faster. By using these methods we are adding to the growing problem of global warming and the deterioration of our earth.
Electric Clothes Dryers are detrimental to our environment. They leave off significant amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere every day, over a ton a year per household! If you use them, synthetic dryer sheets are also full of petrochemicals that are emitted into our air. I found this website that is solely dedicated to drying your laundry on the line. Called LineDryIt.com, this site is based in Australia where line drying is still a prevalent way of life. They have many new alternatives to the old pole-in-the-ground laundry line like my grandmother used. Some are hide away products, and not so obtrusive for those who live in a tight space or don’t like the look of a traditional clothes line.
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