T he ’70s Kenmore dryer at Pat and Bill Taylor’s home doesn’t get much use.
When Pat Taylor pulls the sheets, damp and clean, from the washer, she usually heads to the clothesline, just like she did when she was a girl.
“I like doing it,” said the Edmonds woman. “It feels good to come out here and hang them on a sunny day.”
She’s not the only one.
Yards may be getting smaller and homeowners associations might be banning them, but people still use clotheslines.
Some want to save money and energy. Others feel a connection to their mothers and grandmothers snapping freshly laundered sheets onto a line.
Everyone talks about the smell.
“It smells like something in the air,” Taylor said. “Fresh and clean and crisp.”
She is a devoted clothesline user for all those reasons. Taylor spent many a Saturday morning as a teenager hanging wet laundry on the family clothesline.
Then it was just a chore to get through before a weekend of freedom. But later, as an adult living in a Seattle apartment, she found she missed it. Something about the crisp, clean smell of air-dried sheets couldn’t be replicated in a commercial dryer.
As soon as she owned a home with a yard, up went a clothesline. Now at her Edmonds home, an umbrella model occupies a prominent spot in the couple’s yard.
This isn’t just any yard, either. The Taylors tend a gorgeous garden that’s been the star of garden tours.
“I want it out here where it gets maximum sun,” she said. “I don’t care if people don’t like it.”
While no visitor to her garden has ever uttered a negative comment, she knows many find clotheslines an eyesore.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t see what unsightly about sheets and towels on the line. For me, looking out and seeing them flapping in the wind is nice.”
It doesn’t take that much more time than using a dryer, she said. She puts out clothes even when temperatures dip down into the 40s. On warm days they can dry in an hour. When it rains, she uses drying racks inside.
“The dryer is a big user of electricity,” she said. “This is free. It costs me nothing but a box of clothes pins.”
Clotheslines are hard to find in many parts of the country. Many big box stores offer them for just a few weeks in the spring.
Paul Gay co-owns a small, family-run business that sells the largest selection of clotheslines in the United States to people all over the country.
The Maine-based company sells T-post clotheslines, the iconic kind with lines stretched between two posts. They also sell three dozen other versions, including retractable lines that attach to the side of the house, indoor-outdoor combinations with wheels, and a new model made in Canada that puts the clothespins on for you.
A heavy-duty T-post costs $199, a standard umbrella model, $59.99.
Umbrella-style clotheslines, which look like their name, are the most popular sellers. These take up less space and are easier to maneuver, Gay said. The company makes and sells some clotheslines, but the rest come from other countries. No major U.S. companies manufacture clotheslines or clothespins any more, and that’s a disappointment for many of his customers, he said.
“A lot of housing developments don’t allow them nowadays,” Gay said. “I think back to my childhood with my mother hanging out clothes on the line. It’s such a positive image. I don’t know why some people think it’s an eyesore.”
So who buys clotheslines?
“Usually younger or older women,” Gay said. “Most people in between don’t want anything to do with them.”
His customers tend to be kinder, more patient folk than the general public, he observed.
Green, or environmental, advocates often suggest line-drying clothes as a way to conserve energy. Ditching the dryer can save $30 a month or more, depending on the size of the family, Gay said.
He hasn’t seen a huge influx of customers solely interested in green. Many of his customers opt for clotheslines to save a buck, rather than save the Earth.
Locally, McDaniel’s in Snohomish carries umbrella and retractable types, as well as many of the accessories such as clothespins and replacement line.
The umbrella sells well there and so do retractable models, because some neighborhoods restrict clothesline structures, said Karie Bennett, housewares buyer for McDaniel’s.
Bennett harbors warm memories of her grandmother’s clothesline in Snohomish down by the river. She’s considering adding one to the yard of her recently purchased home.
“There’s nothing like sheets dried outside,” she said. “You’ve got to try it, even if you’ve got to hang them over the balcony.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@ heraldnet.com.
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