Its like sex.

What some people find charming others find distasteful.

My ideal for landscaping is the prairie look. The neighbors wouldn't stand for it.

And like sex, it is being politicized. Republicans use dryers and cut their lawns!

There is a serious side here, which my post does not reflect. This woman has every moral right to use a clothesline, and she is arguably doing the morally superior thing by refraining from using a dryer. Now, I would allow her to be left alone to use a clothesline in the privacy of her property. But I suspect that she (especially her supporters) would not stop there. They would ultimately want to restrict my right to use a dryer.

I laugh at them now in the hope that others will laugh too, and maybe help thwart their ultimately tyrannical, NeoLuddite goal.

(The problem is, I used to laugh at the anti-smokers....)

Excuse me Eric, but 'clothesline' is politically incorrect, at least here in Berkeley. According to the City of Berkeley's web site, it should be called a 'Solar dryer.' It is permissible to add (clothesline) in parentheses afterwards for the benefit of the ignorant. See: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/sustainable/residents/TenNewThings.html

Where in that article does it imply they are trying to ban your use of a dryer? That's quite a leap you made. As for the Republican/Democratis angle, I don't see it. Do you know the party affiliations of all these people? I doubt it. Satire needs to have an underlying coherence for it to work.

"Right-to-Dry" Classic!

Gregory--

Here it's called Drying With Dignity.

Get it right next time.

Just you wait Chocolatier. Have you really been so unobservant for the last thirty years?

When I was a kid we used a clothesline to dry our clothes. It's not all that it's cracked up to be. The clothes are stiff as boards after hanging out and the UV from the sun bleaches out the colors and destroys natural fabrics like cotton and silk much more quickly than clothes dryers. Clothes dryers came to the fore for a reason, you know.

My Grandmother used to line-dry her clothes. I used to ask her why, when she also had an electric dryer in the basement. "It's less expensive," she said. Fortunately, she lived in a working-class neighborhood in St. Louis, where nobody would bat an eye at such a thing. To be sure, the clothes did come out board-stiff, and not at all soft. But it really steams me to imagine somebody telling my Grandma that she couldn't line-dry her clothes on her own property. And she didn't water her lawn, either... I imagine if she were still alive, she'd be locked up in the slammer by now.

Eric,

What's your point here? Aside from the knee-jerk reaction to environmentally conscious actions.

Taking the example of two people who are being persecuted for saving energy and water and spinning it into some vast libruhl conspiracy to take away your Maytag is a poor argument. In reality (where I live) the environmentalists would politely ask you to purchase an energy saving clothes dryer and then help you get a rebate from the electric company. The Horror.

The straw-man argument is fun and all:

“Hillary Clinton will force you to wear hemp underwear at gunpoint!!1!”

But if you take a step back for a moment you’ll see how ridiculous it is.

Flame away,

Hillary Clinton will force me to wear hemp underwear at gunpoint?

I don't recall mentioning her at all, but OK.

Hillary can put her hemp underwear on me when she pries my fruit-of-the-loom from my stinking corpse!

I have friends that live on Awbrey Butte, it's not Bush-country. But that's beside the point, it's just an enjoyable story.

I just love the internal mind struggle as the environmentalists vs NIMBYs duke it out. But here, as in Cape Cod, environmentalism ends at the rich liberal's horizon.

This is why I bought property in an old working class neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks here in Austin. Sentiments like "it bombards the senses" don't exist here. The whole idea in the more uptight (white) neighborhoods that they are somehow entitled to ever-increasing home values is absurd, and having local authorities put legal teeth behind such notions is infuriating.

You think the landscaping on my property lowers the value of yours? Well when you sell your home and actually realize a loss, sue me. That's why God made small claims court.

yours/
peter.

This woman has every moral right to use a clothesline, and she is arguably doing the morally superior thing by refraining from using a dryer.

I don't know about morally superior, but it is fiscally superior. 6% out of the electric bill is a heck of a chunk.

I need to check my own neighborhood rules on clotheslines. I could use the money.

What if someone proposed to erect windmills off Martha's Vineyard. Would the environmental eyesore outweigh the reduced use of fossil fuels for power generation? Let's ask Ted Kennedy what he thinks of drying one's laundry in public.

That first picture isn't a boiling tub, it's a leach tub. The man is pouring water over wood ashes to extract the lye. The boiling comes in the next step.

I can understand the cloths lines as she is in a subdivision, but not watering your lawn? This law seems to be a little intrusive for actual law. I don't think municipalities should have that kind of power.

Doesn't time of day make a huge difference in terms of electrical demand?

Hanging close outside during the day avoids using electricity during the peak period, but using the electric dryer off-peak at night isn't quite as bad as daytime use.

KellyG

"In reality (where I live) the environmentalists would politely ask you to purchase an energy saving clothes dryer and then help you get a rebate from the electric company."

Funny, that "politely ask" bit has been already made mandatory.
http://tinyurl.com/2uk8ld

I refuse to bear a clothesline, but I maintain my right to allow a clothesline to bear my clothes!

I use a clothesline whenever I can. It's cheap, quiet, doesn't pollute and I like the fresh air smell better than dryer sheets. I also manage my lawn mostly as habitat, and direct my landscaping efforts toward my vegetable garden and fruit orchard. I'm free to do so, because I DIDN'T BUY INTO A SUBDIVISION. I'm on an old farmstead in a rural township, with no association bylaws or covenants telling me how I can dry my laundry or what color I can paint my front door. If she bought into a community with covenants and such, then she's got to live with the rules she agreed to.

We're using a clothesline now in our backyard in Hershey. And not just any line: a triple-string made of steel, sold through Leiman's of Ohio (who also sell to the Amish).

And, no, the clothes do not come off board-stiff. The towels do, and the sheets don't seem to mind being hung out to dry. And I haven't noticed any fading in our clothes, and I've got a family of five, and you should see the kids!

Gotta stop before I'm sounding like a commercial.

Scott, you're right. Co-workers used to boast about how restrictive their covenants were, to let the rest of us know we weren't ready for the big time. Then they'd rebelliously erect a basketball pole and hoop, with all the tea-party derring-do of Senior Skip Day. Finally they'd run up against something expensive, like replacement roofing or mandatory annexation, IF they stayed in the covenant suburb that long. At that point they'd suddenly become property-rights activists--after having signed away their rights. It's a predictable declension: First month, "There are DEER in our yard!" Second month: "Damn deer ate the trees again." Third: "I hit a deer." November: "You hunt deer, don't you?"

BTW, you ain't fooling me, friend. "Managing lawn as habitat" is a logical but unintended extension of "landscaping a vegetable garden." Is your electric fence solar-powered? My groundhogs don't get headstones.

Time of day has no effect on the amount of electricity a dryer will use. It only affects the load on the grid.

Bill, it's Lehman's, in Kidron. That's quite a pull for old Dobbin, ain't it? I want to see if I've understood you correctly: you line dry your kids?

What Pete said. I got a house here in a working class suburb of Philly, and these home owner's associations are the work of the devil. They're so fascist.

I've got a gas dryer... it doesn't use very much electricity.

The woman does not have the right to use a clothesline if the rules of her subdivision don't allow it. Presumably, when she bought her house, she was given a copy of the rules.

My neighborhood recently went through a clean up of violations of various deed restrictions and ordinances. The neighborhood is much more pleasant now. The rules enforced range from keeping lawns mowed to eliminating standing water (a health issue in mosquito infested Houston). Some of the rules are probably silly... but some are not. And I don't want my neighbors picking and choosing which ones they follow so I'll do my best to follow them, too. If I don't like them, I'll move.

EI

She does have a right to use a cloths line, just not a right to hang it outside.

I air dry a large percentage of my clothing and do it inside--have for the better part of 10-12 years in 4 cities. Never had a clothes line outside.

Yeah, but Billy, if she air dries her clothing inside like you and I do (it's $1.50/load and commercial dryers are hell on fabrics), she won't get the ATTENTION she's looking for. No warm congratulations from admirers, no well-wishers in her fight against Evil Capitalist Interests.