I'm Not Green, I'm Cheap!

With all the talk about "Going Green" I am really surprized that more people don't put up a laundry line. Perhaps it is too "White Trash" for the hip, urbane Portland-Metro types. Maybe it is too much work for most people. Whatever the case, I rarely see anyone hanging their clothes outside to dry.

Our clothes line did not happen because I care about the environment, or I want to save the spotted owl, or keep glaciers from melting. We have a clothes line up now because I'm cheap.

The Fridgidair washer and dryer we use came with the house. The washer washes, but the dryer doesn't dry. I've done what I can to get it to dry our clothes better, but it often takes over an hour to dry a load of clothes. That is a lot of electricity. It is also a lot of work for Carlene, who works from home and takes time out of her work schedule to do the laundry durning the day. She has to start drying the clothes and constantly check the dryness of the laundry and restart the dryer.

I can't remember how we decided to put up our laundry line, but it's been many months in the making. About two months ago, we finally made it happen. With two 10 foot cedar posts and a lot of elbow grease, I got the posts set in our concrete-like soil. We ordered a laundry line from an internet company, and when it got here, I made a cedar cross-piece and put the whole thing together. Because our back yard faces south, we will have plenty of sun in the early spring, summer, and fall with which to dry our clothes.

Yes, it does take some time to hang all the clothes, but once it's up, you can forget about it for a while. Unlike the dryer, you can leave them to dry for hours without worrying about overdrying. The clothes can be a little stiff (especially cheap towels; I could build shelves with our cheap towels after they've been dried in the sun), but 5 minutes in the dryer on a no-heat tumble softens up most things to the point that you would never know they were dried outside.

Overall, I estimate we spent about $200 putting the thing up, but I believe it will pay for itself in a couple years.

Now, about that internet-ordered laundry line... It's not easy to tell from the photo, but ours is a 5-line retractable unit. So it has five seperate lines, which when streched across the 13 or so feet between the posts, gives us a lot of room for clothes, towels, sheets, or whatever we want to hang. By loosening a knob, we can retract all the lines into the reel housing and get the lines out of the way. Why would we want to do that? Well, for one thing, since we can't really use it all year, we can take it down when the weather is no longer conducive to line drying, thus extending the life of the setup. Secondly, with the lines retracted, we can use the posts for other things, mainly hanging our hammock.

When Carlene and I went to Cancuna few years ago, we bought a hammock at the resort gift shop. We paid about 300 or 350 pesos for it. That was $26 American. Since we were living in our apartment at the time, we stored it until we had a place of our own to hang it up. Well, the time has come! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the hammock up right now. I'll try to take some later, if anyone is interested. I need to show Carlene how to put up the hammock, because I would like her to be able to take a break out of her work day to stow the clothes line (assuming she isn't drying anything at the moment), put the hammock up, and relax in the sun for a few minutes.

So there is my attempt at being green. Well, not really. More like saving green. I'm hoping this project will save us money in the long run. It was not a lot of fun to put up, but I believe it was well worth the effort. I would like to thank Mark and Feney, and Paul for lending the tools, supplies, and logistical support necessary to making this happen. Thanks guys!