The clothesline debate: Drying for Freedom

In the “old days,” there were no electric clothes dryers. Laundry was hung outside to dry, weather permitting. Today almost everyone has access to an electric dryer. They’re said to consume at least 6 percent of household electricity, at a cost of $5 billion a year in the US.
As we become more environmentally aware, it seems like a good idea to hang clothes outside whenever we can. Get that genuine fresh air smell and feel from Nature rather than from chemicals added during the wash and dry cycle. The problem is, though, most communities have outlawed outdoor clothes lines. Seems it’s a “low class” thing to do and brings down property values. Kind of like rusting junked cars sitting next to the driveway.

The rules outlawing clotheslines are local laws. In the last year, several states – Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Vermont – have moved to restore laundry drying rights to residents. Florida and Utah already had laws in effect, and several other states are considering bills.
This is an issue that brings together environmentally-aware young people and nostalgic older adults. Says Alexander Lee, a New Hampshire lawyer who runs the website Project Laundry List, “There are a lot of kids these days who don’t even know what a clothespin is. They think it’s a potato chip clip.”

The answer my friend …

A British filmmaker, Steven Lake, is making a documentary about the issue. “It seems like such a mundane thing, hanging laundry, and yet it draws in all these questions about individual rights, private property, class, aesthetics, the environment,” says Lake.
Here’s a very well done trailer from the upcoming documentary, Drying for Freedom.

From the Drying for Freedom website:

The Drying For Freedom story starts in 1950’s post-war America as corporations profited from domestic growth and increased our reliance on labor saving energy consuming white goods. Companies like General Electric spent millions on marketing strategies including television sponsorship and support for public figures like Ronald Regan. Their aim was to ensure we purchased white goods. It worked and now energy, consumerism, profits and property value comes second to our freedom of choice and the environment.
Now, after 60 years of energy consumption we are beginning to understand the impact on the planet. Drying For Freedom will explore the story of our domestic energy love affair, the people who are campaigning against it, the rules our society have created to sustain it and the environmental legacy it is leaving. Whether you live in London, Mexico, Shanghai or a small village in Kenya, everyone washes and dry’s clothes. This fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by corporations who are targeting developing nations with marketing strategies to ensure that the clothes drying cycle repeats.

There was even a murder over a clothesline dispute in Verona, Mississippi in 2008.
Stay tuned.

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