adventures in green living: the clothesline

Back in the 90s, I was a ski bum living in Crested Butte, Colorado. Skied all day, socialized in the small town bars in the evenings. One of the bars hosted two talented singers, Jackie and Vanita, who were spending time town on their way to Alaska. They were similar in sound to the Indigo Girls. One of my favorite songs of theirs was "Hanging on a Clothesline" and it was a funny take on a bigger girls' relationship with a thinner guy, and how their clothing looked together big and small, hanging on the line, flapping in the wind.

Fast forward to today, it's beautiful here in Atlanta, about 80 degrees already, and I'm starting to put out some clothes to dry. We live in an urban environment, with only a small bit of outdoor space, so I've always just brought a few clothing items out on hangers and hung them up to dry. This spring, I'm going to pick up a retractable clothes line I can hang up, and dry even more items outside. this is the one I'm going to buy.

The fact is that hanging your clothes on a line to dry is better for them. Colors last longer, giving your clothes a longer life. The fabric holds up longer--dryer lint is nothing but a thin layer that has been sheared from your clothes. The high heat of a dryer can also play havoc with the size of your clothes, so that something with a perfect fit comes out misshapen or, worse, six sizes smaller.

Also when you line-dry something, you're not eating up electricity. In terms of energy, dryers are by far the most wasteful appliance in the house, gobbling up 6% of your electric bill. The Wall Street Journal reported that eliminating the dryer portion of your laundry chores will cut an astounding 4.4 pounds of carbon emissions. One ecological watchdog calculates that as the equivalent of losing 16 square feet of natural habitat per load. Run a dryer for two hours only six times a month, and you're spending at least $70 a year, based on a national average of 12¢ per kilowatt-hour.

In Atlanta, line drying season has begun! I encourage you to give it a try.

atlanta tornado

i live in downtown Atlanta in a 100+year old former rug factory my husband (with a bit of help from me) developed into our home and work space, a process that took a tremendous amount of blood, sweat, tears, ingenuity, and stamina - and we're still not done yet...

i was shutting my computer down Friday night when I heard some lightning in the area and the power went out. Our dogs are terrified of storms and all three needed to be in the bed or right next to it. Gorgeous but stinky brindle dog Spooky was shivering through the night and kept licking me with her fuzzy-yucky tongue. Once in the night I heard some short bursts of hail.

Woke up in the morning - still no power. My husband hooked up the generator to the fridge and then television and learned a tornado had struck downtown just as we lost power in the evening. The Georgia Dome and CNN, less than a mile from our house, had sustained a large amount of damage, as well as Centennial Park, many downtown buildings and hotels, and residences in nearby Cabbagetown and East Atlanta were affected. We climbed up on our roof and saw the eerie sight of broken windows in many of the downtown skyscrapers, emergency lights flashing, and drapes billowing from broken Westin windows on the highest floors. Later in the afternoon, another tornado watch and some serious hail, and we gathered up the dogs and went down to our basement grotto with candles and waited out a brief storm. It was a long, quiet day. Our power was restored at 10:30 pm.

My mom gave me some prayer flags for my birthday this past summer, a string of colored flags that say peace in several languages. We hung them on the front of our building. They were always getting tangled in the wind and twisted up, when I wish they would hang nicely. But Tibetan lore says when prayer flags flap in the wind, prayers are released out into the world. We were beyond lucky to be just outside the path of the storm, that the elements somehow spared our home and work. I thought maybe the prayer flags had a small part in our good fortune. Now our prayer flags are flying for the rebuilding and revitalization of downtown Atlanta.