How can we save up to 6% of our total electricity usage? Dry our clothes outside–hang them on clothes lines. Unless the neighbors try to interfere, as described by this article from Time Magazine. [1]
Yes, there are people who want to do their part to lower their carbon footprint.
But on the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on aesthetic grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) across the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unsightly but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have sparked a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for legislation to protect the choice to use clotheslines.
The article notes that 3 states limit the ability of Homeowner Associations to ban clothelines (Florida, Hawaii and Utah). North Carolina is working to be a fourth state, but the effort is drawing opposition from HOA’s and the real estate industry.
Imagine the excitement if scientists suddenly announced that there was a new as-yet-undiscovered energy source that would provide six percent of all the electricity in the United State without any environmental drawback. It would be the front page of every newspaper. Here’s an equivalent idea that, unfortunately, meeting with derision by short-sighted people who obsess about a stilted idea of appearances. So , is a clothes line ugly?
Project Laundry List’s [2] [Alexander Lee] dismisses the notion that clotheslines depreciate property values, calling that idea a “prissy sentiment” that needs to change in light of global warming. “I understand the need for communities to legislate taste, but people always find a way around it,” he says. “The clothesline is beautiful–gorgeous, sentimental and nostalgic for many.
The quote featured on the homepage of Project Laundry List? It’s by Benjamin Franklin:
We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.
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