It was Boy in Black who first started the trend of washing clothes and then hanging them up wherever he could to dry: on the chandelier in the front hallway, on the curtain rod above the sliding glass doors, or from the fireplace mantel. It used to drive me crazy, to come home and have to brush past wet Ultimate jerseys just to enter my home. Even when it’s just been washed, an Ultimate shirt smells like layers of old sweat.
“Why are your shirts hanging all over the living room?” I’d ask.
Boy in Black would answer calmly. “Because I just did a wash. I’ve hung them to dry.”
“Can’t you hang them somewhere else?” I’d ask.
He’d look up from his computer. “Where?”
He had a point. We don’t have a basement or an attic. In the summer months, clothes can be hung outside on sunny days, but in this climate, summer lasts only a few months, and much of that is rainy.
Besides, there was a certain logic to his method. Forced air heating takes the moisture out of the air in our house, and the newly washed clothes dry pretty fast. Certainly, it doesn’t make sense to waste energy using the dryer if we don’t need to. Clothes that have been hung to dry last longer, shrink less, and don’t need to be ironed.
Pretty soon, Boy in Black had converted the rest of the household. When I do a load of wash, I grab a bunch of hangers and just start hanging shirts anywhere I can. We’ve all gotten used to clothes hanging on the curtain rod by the table. When the sun shines in against them in the early morning, the colors can be quite pretty.
9 comments:
We have a second-floor laundry room and a folding drying rack set up on the second-floor landing that we almost never put away--between the rack and the railing, I hang about 2/3 to 3/4 of my laundry and dry the rest (jeans, towels, corduroy) on automatic, so it cuts waaaay down on drying time.
And you're right: it's pretty, especially when it's sorted by color!
My mom does the same thing! She never uses the dryer, so in the winter clothes hang all around our house and by the wood stove. It's nice to know that she isn't the only person that does that.
when we lived in japan, nobody had a clothes dryer. lots of people hung laundry on balconies if it was sunny. there were these wonderful hanging racks with clothspins that worked really well for indoor drying -- especially when it was cold, and we were using the kerosene heater, which made the air really dry. we still hang some clothes to dry indoors, festooned here and there.
I hang dry a ton of my laundry. I love the way it looks on the drying rack, so pretty.
Do you guys not have a dryer? Or do you just not run it during the summer. We have a W/D but we rack-dry many items of clothing. Plus we put towels outside, although they still need to be popped in the dryer for 5-10 mins to get nice and fluffy.
My, it is colorful. I would do it just for the photo op.
For "Boy In Black", he sure has a colorful taste of clothing. Ha...
Idle Guy: Ha! That load of laundry belonged to my daughter. Her clothes are the prettiest. Boy in Black's laundry is mostly white and black Ultimate jerseys.
Looks like prayer flags to me...
Post a Comment