By MARGI SHRUM
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A few months ago, feeling strung out by the 9 to 5, I began to think of things that would free me from my ergonomically correct chair. Homemaking has always been one of my passions (yes, I like to clean) and, I decided, why not hang the clothes out to dry, as many people still do, as I used to?
I sought to have my clothes dry au naturel, in the raw wind, billowing from a cotton line strung tight between two poles.
I wanted to bury my nose in sheets and towels and shirts not tumbled in dry gas-fired heat but warmed gently in the rays of a great bright day.
I embarked on my line-drying quest in late July, beginning with some research and observation.
I paused when I noticed that there are no clotheslines -- that I could see -- in my middle-class neighborhood. No hooks hung from backyard porches or trees, nothing strung between funky cast-iron poles with hooks on the top.
And finding the right equipment wasn't easy: If you want hooks alone, they're everywhere, but poles -- no.
I tried the local hardware. The folks there said they could order steel poles, but it would take awhile. I tried the big-box stores; nothing. I tried Craigslist and got a few offers of mismatched poles with the life rusted out of them.
So I tried other sites on the Internet. There, clotheslines and outdoor-drying paraphernalia abound. (Odd that something that dates to the first loincloth would find a lively virtual existence.) I searched those sites for information on types of lines and comments from veteran dryers as to which lines are best.
The information directed me to a $39.98 "umbrella dryer" made by Whitney that I purchased at a Home Depot in Bridgeville, Pa. You cement a holder in the ground and insert the pole, open it up and get enough drying space for four to five loads, with lines strung in a circle that looks much like a tidy, radiating spider's web. The device spins, too, so you easily can reach all lines.
The photo on the wrapper was my first clue that I might be heading into what some might call frumpy-hausfrau territory. It showed a middle-aged woman sporting that kind of dyed hair that not at all matches the age of her face. She was plunking clothes on the line in what appeared to be a rural back yard.
The next clue was the label on the clothespin bag I bought along with a pack of 96 clothespins: "Old-fashioned clothespin bag."
I paused -- was what I was doing passe? Declasse? -- but I persevered. My supportive husband installed the umbrella dryer.
My two teen-agers were puzzled and perplexed. "You do know you have a dryer in the basement," my 18-year-old son said. "At least it's in the back, where no one can see it," said my 17-year-old daughter, kindly offering to buy the largest thong she could find to hang on it.
The line dryer is in our upper yard, up 26 steps -- 13 from the laundry room to the patio, and 13 from there to the yard. It is in a corner of the yard, the only place where there is enough sun for drying because we have so many trees.
When I schlepped my first load up there, I was a bit chagrined. I mean, here I am, a college-educated woman with a solid professional career behind me, with a laundry basket on my hip and clothespins at the ready.
I mostly got over it. Except one day I realized that I was hanging out clothes in ill-fitting shorts, an old top and a gift from my youngest that he purchased at the school holiday shop, a fake diamond necklace inscribed with "Mom."
Such aesthetic concerns, I found in my research, are not uncommon. Some condo complexes, even towns, have banned line drying, saying it is unsightly and detracts from property values, opinions with which not everyone agrees.
The Web site Project Laundry List (laundrylist.org), for example, is dedicated to ensuring that consumers "have the legal right to hang out their laundry" and supports "right to dry" laws, as well as conservation measures. Run by lawyer Alexander Lee of New Hampshire, the site has received widespread press attention in recent years and has a stated philosophy against nuclear energy.
Although my endeavor had less to do with eco-politics than personal satisfaction, I found laundrylist.org to be helpful, with hints on line drying as well as decreasing drying time if you do use a gas or electric dryer.
"Clothes drying, both gas and electric, uses about 3 percent of all energy used in homes," says John Cymbalsky, information officer for residential energy use for the U.S. Department of Energy. "Since clothes drying outside uses no energy, I would think you could safely call that energy-efficient."
He said, though, that new clothes washers being mandated by the DOE "are very efficient at extracting water from the clothes, and, therefore, we should see energy required for clothes dryers decrease over time as these continue to penetrate the market."
But what of the more direct connection between woman and child, woman and nature, even the exercise that outdoor drying offers?
"Don't you feel strong when you carry that (laundry) basket up the stairs?" asks dedicated line dryer Irene Rawlings of Denver, author with Andrea Vansteenhouse of "The Clothesline" ($21.95, Gibbs Smith). "I just loved the idea of it," she says in answering why she undertook line drying. "(Although) I'm sure when women had to do it to keep their families in clean clothes, they didn't love it as much."
A slim primer, history and compilation of remembrances about line drying, "The Clothesline" captures the sociology, practicality and just plain romance behind the ancient housework.
"It's a connection with the women who came before," says Rawlings, former editor of Mountain Living magazine, adding that many people have what she calls "clothesline stories."
"One woman (told us), 'We had a family of eight kids, and we were always delighted to be the one hanging because it was the only time we had with mom.' They vied to be picked."
She said that a friend who grew up in New York City recalled having "the longest clothesline in America. It ran from the kitchen window of his apartment on 106th Street and Second Avenue to the kitchen window of the building across the way. When the laundry was dry, (his mother) rang a bell so the woman she shared a line with would know the line was free.
"Once a year the line broke and sent the laundry plunging down three stories. In his memory, it was always onto a group of men playing bocce."
Rawlings adds: "I have a dryer. I try not to use it but not for any moral reasons -- just for the reason of hanging (laundry) up. It smells just like sunshine."
It does, and my two months' experiment in line drying has showed me its other attractions.
Being in my yard undisturbed is delightful. I slow down despite myself: No e-mail, no Twitter, no cell phone. Only the outdoors and quiet flap of clothes in the breeze, the sun on my shoulders, a sense of ... well, accomplishment.
My golden retriever watches as I fuss over the line, and I cluck to her as I fuss. She leans against me in delight. My daughter has even joined me in pinning up clothes, a replay of that time-tested, laundry-day bonding between mother and daughter. We chat uninterrupted.
I've watched a baby hawk swoop among our backyard trees, and an adult hawk hover high in the air above me and my clothesline, hanging still for minutes at time.
I missed this, while in my ergonomically correct chair.
As Rawlings does, I look forward to line-drying days and follow the forecast to see when conditions will be optimal. I look forward to dry, crisp, sunny fall days. I will trek up 26 steps with my laundry basket and take in what line drying says to me.
I noticed one day that a T-shirt I was hanging had a tag on it: "Do what you like. Like what you do."
I pinned the shirt on the line.
Sources:
Project Laundry List (laundrylist.org) gives tips on drying, promotes the practice and gives many links to other sources.
"The Clothesline" by Irene Rawlings and Andrea Vansteenhouse ($21.95, Gibbs Smith) offers vignettes, history, how-tos and lovely photos of picturesque clotheslines.
Large line-drying equipment, such as umbrella dryers and T-pole dryers, can be hard to find, although some big-box stores such as Home Depot carry umbrella dryers and wall-mount types. Online, stacksandstacks.com, greenandmore.com and organize.com are good sources. Accessories, such as clothespins, lines, hooks and clothespin bags, are found at discount retailers, such as Kmart.
(Margi Shrum can be reached at mshrum(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
