There’s something complicated about the clothesline: Many films and novels depict pivotal gossip and stolen kisses between white sheets billowing on the line, and many real-life women have found both peaceful moments of solitude and connecting moments of shared stories in this space. Nonetheless, the clothesline resists nostalgia; drying clothes outside is a physically demanding chore that many people have been glad to set aside for decades.
Aside from the positive climate change and environmental aspects of clothesline drying, there is a freshness fragrance that cannot be matched by any dryer sheet (which have their own complicated consequences) and there's no static either! Thanks for this less than complicated personal fix that many of us can enlist to help lessen some of the damage of climate change.
I like your ruminations on drying clothes. It occurred to me as I read your essay, that hanging out your clothes also improves the small-water-cycle/precipitation-recycling. The slow water movement has been so far about slowing the water in the landscape. But I think hanging out your clothes could be a part of the slow water movement too, as it impacts atmospheric water.
You would have loved the long deliberation about where and how to hang our laundry line recently in cohousing after we took it down for our once-a-decade painting of our homes. It was pretty epic.
I love that you used drying clothes as a jumping off point to talk about the importance of tending our surroundings and being attentive to them and the power of slowing down for bearing witness to the predicament we’re in. Beautiful thank you
You've got me prioritizing line drying on my to-do list--it's moved up from the bottom of "things to consider" to closer to the top in the "as soon as I can get to it."
Aside from the positive climate change and environmental aspects of clothesline drying, there is a freshness fragrance that cannot be matched by any dryer sheet (which have their own complicated consequences) and there's no static either! Thanks for this less than complicated personal fix that many of us can enlist to help lessen some of the damage of climate change.
“… (in that way that we are remade every day) “
I like your ruminations on drying clothes. It occurred to me as I read your essay, that hanging out your clothes also improves the small-water-cycle/precipitation-recycling. The slow water movement has been so far about slowing the water in the landscape. But I think hanging out your clothes could be a part of the slow water movement too, as it impacts atmospheric water.
You would have loved the long deliberation about where and how to hang our laundry line recently in cohousing after we took it down for our once-a-decade painting of our homes. It was pretty epic.
I love that you used drying clothes as a jumping off point to talk about the importance of tending our surroundings and being attentive to them and the power of slowing down for bearing witness to the predicament we’re in. Beautiful thank you
You've got me prioritizing line drying on my to-do list--it's moved up from the bottom of "things to consider" to closer to the top in the "as soon as I can get to it."