(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

Please, someone, anyone, stop me from commenting in the latest pollanesque post to be sarcastic about Americans and clothes driers.

... but seriously. They had a NATIONAL HANGING OUT DAY. Bloggers wrote TIPS ON HANGING OUT YOUR WASHING. GUYS, IT'S NOT HIGH TECH. It's CHEAPER (power), BETTER FOR YOUR CLOTHES (wear and tear from driers - not to mention wrinkles), and CLEANER (the sun is a great steriliser.) Why why WHY would you routinely use a drier? In SUMMER? (Even not in summer! What the hell are clothes racks for?) I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. STOP THE MADNESS. HANG YOUR CLOTHES OUT ON THE FREAKING WASHING LINE.

Comments

[kheha.livejournal.com]

Don't you have to iron then? :-/

(So, so lazy.)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I never iron except when I use a drier and leave the clothes in too long after. Drying things in hot air and leaving them scrunched up sets in wrinkles a hell of a lot more than drying things spread out flat on a clothesline. IMO. Unless you suck at pegging which, I can only assume, you all do since you've never done it.

[kitsunerei88]

Reason why people use dryers in the summer:

Some cities have bylaws forbidding you to hang out your laundry. Mine is one of those places. Outside, at least. I think it's something to do with making the neighbourhood unattractive or something, but who knows? At home we always hung the laundry outside.

Being a poor student, your options are to attempt to rig up a laundry line inside (I know many people who do this) or use the dryer.

Also, about being cleaner . . . BUGS. GAAAH. I HATE IT WHEN BUGS GET IN MY CLOTHING. Maybe it's just because I'm out in the middle of nowhere though. Especially stinkbugs. They're huge and gross and gross.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Some cities have bylaws forbidding you to hang out your laundry.

Unbelievable. UNBELIEVABLE. What, you can't hang things out in your OWN BACK YARD? UNBELIEVABLE.

re: bugs, I've never noticed it myself. I'm not a big fan of bugs in the shower, that's for sure.

[kitsunerei88]

No, you can't. I asked my boyfriend, and he says he thinks the reasoning is partly aesthetic ("Hanging clothes outside is NOT ATTRACTIVE" . . . what? They're clothes, for gods sake . . .) and possibly partially safety. Don't want kids accidentally killing themselves on washing line . . . (though really, I'd like to believe that most kids are smarter than that)

Well, the only bugs you'd notice (I found bugs flock to white clothing especially, or maybe that's because I can actually see them against the white) are really small are harmless. . . it's only when you get stink bugs (http://www.ent.iastate.edu/images/hemiptera/stinkbug/brown_stink_bug_adult.jpg) that you'd freak. They're about 2.5cm long.

[ihatyou.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention about the cities banning clothes lines. I heard that a few months ago and it's seriously jaw-dropping. I do have fond memories of swinging around on the clothesline as a child though, haha.

I have another reason though, and that is that if you live in a high-crime area and hang nice clothing on the line and have your back turned for even a minute IT WILL VANISH. My family lost a lot of clothes this way before learning our lesson... but then we just hung clothes up inside so that's not a real excuse either.

But it could be difficult for people who live in apartments, especially if they don't have a washing machine. And using shared washing machines and driers means household washing machines aren't manufactured and eventually disposed, and industrial washing machines are more efficient then domestic ones, so maybe it's actually not so bad for the environment in comparison? But routinely not using a clothes line when you could seems like madness to me too.

I always iron my clothes off the line, they look so wrinkly! But my flatmates do laugh at me so maybe it's not necessary after all. Maybe I will walk on the wild side and try skipping it next time.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I have another reason though, and that is that if you live in a high-crime area and hang nice clothing on the line and have your back turned for even a minute IT WILL VANISH.

This is just about the only reason I can think of that I would actually buy. But I would generally consider that to be one of the big downsides of living in a high-crime area!

As for apartments... I generally managed to dry my clothes without using a drier when I was living in a single room in my Halls, but it was difficult so I sort of understand people's reluctance there. But it's not just people living in apartments, you know?

In re: ironing clothes off the line, I was actually thinking that most of the clothes I wear don't ever need ironing to start off with. I wear a lot of t-shirts and jeans, so. I guess my dad ironed his shirts sometimes? OTOH, I don't think it would make a difference to me whether they'd been machine or line dried - if my clothes needed ironing one way they'd probably need it the other way.

[ihatyou.livejournal.com]

Mmm, doing washing in the Halls was a pain. But I get that it is becoming the general attitude in the US not to hang washing out, and that is crazy. I pretty much just wear jeans and t-shirts too. My mum used to iron all my stuff so I think I picked the habit up without questioning it. Maybe I can save the time/effort/electricity, I'll see how it goes.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Erm. All I can say is, somehow children of the world mostly manage not to kill themselves with washinglines. (I'm trying to restrain myself from commenting on the ridiculousness of worrying about clotheslines but not about say, gun control. I know which one would be my priority. But that's a little unpleasant to say.)

I really don't understand the clothes-aren't-attractive argument. Clotheslines are in your back yard! Who's going to see them, for pete's sake?

*shrug* Well, maybe we don't have them here. I've found the occasional bee when hanging out the washing, but that's the limit (and they buzz away happily enough if you leave them alone.)

[kitsunerei88]

Hey, I'm not saying anything about whether or not washing lines should be used. Personally, I'd LOVE to use a washing line because that would cut the cost of doing laundry by half. When did doing laundry get so freaking expensive?

And Canada has gun control laws! Though really, all that means is that to own a gun you're registered and must have an FAC.

I don't make the laws. Politicians do. I am going to crawl into my bastion of academia and never leave.

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

No one has a clothes line in the States anymore. I wouldn't even know where to buy one.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, so I gather. I just - this is completely unimaginable to me. A nation (plus Canada, apparently) without clothes lines. Wow.

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid people used clothes lines, old people still do, but they're about the only ones who do.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember talking to a friend a few years back and he was saying it was a status thing - line drying was something poor people did, basically. Blah, I recognise that if people don't have the facilities it just becomes something people don't do, it just seems like such a crazy thing to happen! I can't imagine phasing out my washing line. Here machine drying is unusual to the extent that I live with three other people and if any of them were regularly machine drying (like, except for those mornings when you realise your uniform's wet and all your knickers are dirty and it's pissing down outside) it would be a Big Deal. There would be Talks.

Saying that, though, I live with a bunch of students, we're not poster children for having plenty of money to spend.

[kitsunerei88]

We have clotheslines.

In the country, at least.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

So like, 99% of Canada, right?

;)

[kitsunerei88]

Everywhere except Southwestern Ontario.

Actually, most of Southwestern Ontario too.

So more like 99.5% ^^''

[sennical.livejournal.com]

I have way too many clothes for that to be at all feasible when I live in a 12x14 room. Maybe next year.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I did it when I was in that situation - but I guess it was kinda hard. (People used to do all sorts of fabulous things - I had one friend who wired up her whole ceiling so she could lower a line, put some clothes on it, and haul it back up. Brilliant!) I just used a wire clothes rack but I guess if you don't have washing lines you probably don't have those either. ;) I don't know, I'm not meaning to be all guilt guilt, I just think this is AMAZING. in the bad way.

[sennical.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have a drying rack, and it is only just big enough for my bras and my Do Not Put In Dryer clothes.

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

I hang clothes in my closet, on coat hangers.

[dubiously.livejournal.com]

I live in an apartment, so I can't use one, but my mother has a clothes line in her backyard. Anytime I've ever helped her fold her laundry after it's dried, the cloth always feels very stiff and gross to me, almost crunchy. I don't know if it's the chemicals she uses or the fact that she doesn't get much wind in her yard, but I don't like it. I can't stand it against my skin.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I guess that happens occasionally - I want to say it's a too much washing powder thing, but you might be right about the wind thing. It doesn't bother me because I grew up with it (and I definitely don't notice that fabric retains that feel after being folded) but I kind of see your point except, you know, drying is like 6% of a power bill or something. Obviously if you can afford your power bills that's not really a problem? It just seems like kind of a big deal to me.

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

My American ex-girlfriend always insisted that hanging out clothes to dry inside the house made the room smell mildewy and gross.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

In some houses that's probably true, which is why you wait for a sunny day. Or open a window, ffs! We don't have that problem because we have a heat pump in the living room (and you've seen my family home, it's bigass wide open spaces, same deal.)

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

I can't say I've ever noticed it, either in rather small flats, but sometimes one just doesn't have a choice - you can't wait for good weather in the middle of winter.

I expect it's just a matter of an ongoing campaign to tell poor American households that they MUST HAVE certain consumer electronics which are in fact luxuries. Myself I'd love a drier, but it's a want, not a need.

[suchroadslead.livejournal.com]

Wow. Sometimes I love Americans for their sheer so-absurd-I-can-only-giggle-ness. (Graham is well aware of this, probably much to his dismay). I certainly have never gotten over their inability to dry their clothes outside - especially when it costs so much and does such terrible things to your clothes. I haven't had a dryer in five years (although I did use one in the halls - it never actually crossed my mind to dry them in my room back then - but then I was incompetant, and could barely run the washing machine, so possibly not surprising), and while I've occasionally missed on when it won't stop raining for weeks, I've never needed one so badly that I've gone to a laundromat, so it can't have been that bad.

If you want some more awesomely absurd American thinking, read this article on stuff - http://www.stuff.co.nz/4490597a19716.html . It's about "Shopping Lists making a comeback" - "A growing number of American women are returning to shopping lists to help them stick to family budgets, relying on a money-saving tactic once used broadly during the Great Depression, according to retail analyst Britt Beemer." I wasn't actually aware that shopping lists had been so near extinction, but that's just me. The article also describes how one woman uses her shoppping list - "a white sheaf of paper that had lines drawn through items she had already found." (really? OMG!), and how she learned this arcane art - apparently her mother-in-law had to teach her!

I'm going to go laugh some more, so I don't cry.

[miriamus.livejournal.com]

I only use a dryer because my flat is so ridiculously damp and only the bottom flat has a washing line. It takes all week for my clothes to dry on a rack...

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

Every time I think I am at peace with the absurdity of modern America, something else comes along to make me *facepalm*. Every damn time.

Re: apartments, I present this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/sixth_light/DSC00255upload.jpg

Dictatorships: doing their bit for the environment. *g*

Also, has any kid ever been killed by a washing line? I mean, how do you do that, short of committing suicide? That is possibly the dumbest excuse I have ever heard.