Clothesline Part II

There's a poster in the women's washroom at Ryerson University that shows a closeup photo of a lot of laundry hanging on a line in front of an older building. The slogan is something like: "This could be your summer home." [CORRECTION MAY 17: IT ACTUALLY SAYS "THIS COULD BE YOUR LAUNDROMAT"] It's intended to sell some kind of work-abroad program for students, I think (I can never remember what ads are selling). I guess it's meant to represent Europe, though I often wonder, when I see it, what impression all that laundry makes on Toronto university students. Is that image appealing? Exotic?

When I first heard that some suburbs and neighbourhoods don't permit laundry lines (I guess it's a bylaw, or maybe in some cases a condo ruling), I was shocked. My small-town upbringing still leaves me naive about what's considered proper in some urban settings -- I laughed out loud when a student of mine told me that in his neighbourhood every house was required to have the same colour of window blinds. But both small towns and cities include citizens who would regulate what other people's houses and yards look like, and I've never understood that. I might not like the fact that my neighbour's porch looks like it's going to fall off, or is so packed with junk it's a fire hazard or is painted bright purple or is ringed by old refrigerator racks. I'm a fairly house-proud person, and people say my home is attractive and neat. But I've never felt I had the right to impose my standards on anyone else. Occasionally I try to include adjacent neighbours in decisions that will improve our properties, but if they aren't interested, I certainly don't call the city or stop talking to them.

My laundry line gives me a great deal of pleasure (see previous post), and the sight of a line of clothes is, to me, a comforting and often charming sight, though I admit that a former neighbour's practice of hanging dirty rags on his line for days did put a tiny blight on some of my patio parties. Our narrow adjacent yards are divided only by low wire fences, and what we lose in privacy we gain in social contact and an expansive, almost forest-like haven of trees and perennials. A couple of houses away, a family of five dries all of their laundry on their backyard line. When an American friend of mine was visiting, she asked, "Why don't they use their dryer?" It didn't occur to her that dryers waste electricity, and she was stunned to learn this family has no dryer.

I admit that the dryer does a better job on a lot of clothes -- T-shirts and towels, in particular, which lack shape and softness when they're line-dried. I'm trying to get in the habit of putting a a limit of 20 minutes on any given dryer load, and finishing the job by hanging stuff either in the basement or on the line. And I'm trying to learn to live with rougher towels.