clotheslines

We had a few 60-degree days last week, here in the land of endless winter. It was such a good thaw that the four inches of ice that has covered my driveway for three weeks finally disappeared. Ice? Oh, you know, the ice from that one snowstorm when SOMEONE neglected to shovel the driveway and then it rained and the snow turned to ice so thick you couldn't bust it up with a pile-driver. I have fallen on that ice five times, bruising my tailbone, bonking the back of my head, and twice sliding into a homeplate of fresh dog poop SOMEONE ELSE neglected to pick up, even though it's HIS dog. But I digress.

This warm spell got me feeling cheery, hopeful, ambitious in a home-makery kind of way. So I got out my old clothesline, strung it up between two big trees in my back yard and dried a load of towels. Oh, pioneer!

I love everything about drying laundry on the line. I love the old cotton rope, the faded wooden clothespins (the ones that look like little soldiers, not the ones that look like binder clips), the saggy old clothespin bag, the creaky old pulleys. I'm sure there are all kinds of new-fangled, eco-friendly outdoor drying systems on the market right now, probably made of recycled plastic grocery bags or old duct-tape wallets or something. But that stuff's just not for me. My clothesline has to be the real thing, banging and squeaking like an old screen door.

Everyone knows that sheets dried on the line smell approximately like heaven will smell, if we somehow manage to get there. And because of that good-smelling factor—and, of course, the dozen or so BTUs we're saving for the folks who really need them—we can forgive the fact that towels dry so rough outside that they can draw blood when you're wiping down after a shower.

My favorite part about drying clothes on the line is how deeply therapeutic it is. Hauling that heavy, wet load up from the basement, dragging it outside all by yourself because SOMEONE won't help you, clipping each piece up on the line one by one for what seems like an hour but is probably only 55 minutes, trying not to be mortified by how dingy and miserable all your stuff looks when you see it in broad daylight. I wonder, is there anything sadder than the sight of your own underwear drying on the line? Still, the whole experience is like a Zen koan. Really.

So I encourage you to give this a try. It may seem like alot of trouble, especially when your nifty dryer is right there next to your washing machine, just begging to do the job the Good Lord meant it to do. But the real benefit—knowing you've done a little something right by this planet—truly outweighs all the effort. Plus, if you put the kids to work hanging laundry, it gives them something better to do with their hands than texting their creepy friends all day.