In my rush to talk about the book I’m reading for class I totally forgot to tell the story about starting to use a clothesline for our laundry. The point I was going to make by bringing up the book was that it said that electric clothes driers use up a lot of energy which contributes to all the pollution that goes into making said energy.
Reading The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices finally gave me the kick in the butt to do something so yesterday, before picking up DJ from school, I strung up a clothesline between two pine trees in the backyard. After washing the clothes I decided to do something that my mom-in-law does with her clothes, which is putting them in the dryer for 10 minutes to get the wrinkles out from washing. I figured that would be a good way to compromise so I wouldn’t have to use an iron (egads). While the clothes were in the dryer the storm clouds rolled in for an impromptu afternoon shower our part of the country is so famous for, and after it was over I hung up the clothes. Some of the smaller items went on a fold-able drying rack.
Heat and humidity combined, along with more of these spontaneous showers made the drying time a lot longer and was finally able to pull them off the line the next day. The verdict is that it was an overall success, however. The only casualty was one of my button downs – it fell off and got kind of dirty so I ended having to wash that one over again.
I just hung up the second round. It really doesn’t take that long to do this and if I do it every day we can avoid the Sunday afternoon frenzy of clothes washing that occurs every week. If I can keep it up maybe we’ll end up installing another umbrella clothesline.
No comments:
Post a Comment