Howdy, folks! Staff writer tryouts still have a few days left, but I jotted a quick post this morning and thought I’d squeeze it in this afternoon just to break things up. I wrote a MAMMOTH post about taxes yesterday, but I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day. It’s a sort of tedious subject. See you again on Monday!
I had to smile to myself as I walked up to my office this morning. One of our neighbors has hung their laundry out to dry on their front porch. I think this is great, and hope that others in our neighborhood agree. (I’ll bet they do; it’s that kind of neighborhood.)
This reminded me of the book I’ve been reading. In February, I asked GRS readers to recommend books with true-life stories about frugality. A couple of readers recommended Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, a memoir about growing up in Iowa during the Great Depression. I’ve finally made time to read it, and it’s excellent. Naturally, in the 1930s clothes were hung out to dry — even in winter. It was a family affair, and people liked doing it (probably because they hated the actual washing part of the chore):
Is there any sense trying to make the modern-day reader understand the immense satisfaction we experienced in viewing our bright, clean wash arranged in such a meticulous fashion on the clothesline? Heaven knows we had more than enough to do without this added display of superhousewifery. But the whole ritual was a matter of pride.
[...]
To crawl between crisp sheets, warm and fresh from the sun and air, at the end of a bone-wearying day, is one of the true soul-restoring luxuries of life, which hardly anyone of the current generation will ever know.
Seeing the neighbor’s laundry also reminded me of something that happened over the weekend.
The electricity bill came on Saturday. This is one of Kris’ bills, so I don’t usually see it. But she brought it to me glowing with pride. “Look at our power consumption this year compared to last year,” she said.
“Wow,” I said. “It’s dropped by a third.”
“I know. And do you know why that is?” asked Kris.
“Because I moved my computer up the street to the office?” I guessed. Kris shook her head.
“I think it’s because I’ve been hanging the clothes out to dry,” she said. “I think that’s the entire reason. A clothes dryer uses a lot of electricity. It’s a little more work to use a clothesline, but it’s a lot more satisfying.”
I think our electricity usage has dropped for a combination of these two reasons: moving my work computer out of the house and drying clothes outdoors. Whatever the case, our costs have dropped along with our usage. Our average daily electricity cost is down from $2.50 to $1.85. Sixty-five cents a day won’t make us rich, but it’ll certainly buy us a couple of nice meals on our trip to France next year!
This article is about Frugality, House and Home
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES
My Grandmother is 90. She hangs out clothes at LEAST every other day…it is not for lack of a dryer…she has one, but I think it is circa 1948 and has probably dried less than 10 loads since it was purchased. She says hanging out the wash keeps her young and I must say her sheets smell and feel great. Our HOA won’t let me have a clothes line ( a fight I need to pick with them soon) but I dry as much as I can inside the house.
loading....
A friend gave me a retractable clothesline that I hung in my garage. It reduces the fading from our Florida sun. I like to put the clothes in the dryer for about 5 minutes and it helps with the stiffness and wrinkling.
loading....
I live in an apartment and I line-dry about 1/2 of our clothes on a wooden rack. Big towels, shirts, jeans. Smaller things that would be hard to hang (underwear, socks, washcloths) get dried as well as dress shirts so they don’t end up wrinkled. Once you shake out a t-shirt or a towel, it feels soft again. The only thing is that without a lint trap sometimes towels have fuzz or hair on them, which is kind of gross.
More than saving money, it just seems silly to use so much electricity to dry clothes (while upstairs I’m running a humidifier). In the winter it’s so dry here in Chicago that my bath towels dry in about an hour just hanging on a rack. In the summer it’s humid but a lot warmer and sunnier and things dry quickly on the porch.
loading....
Top on my short list of complaints about our condo’s HoA is that they don’t allow people to dry clothes on the patios. We live in Colorado. It’s sunny a majority of the year. We would save SO MUCH MONEY and lessen our impact on the environment if they would just let us do it, but “it’s against the regulations.” *sighs*
My grandmother dries all of her laundry on a clothes line, and has since I was a little kid. We did in the house I grew up in, either on a rack in the basement, or on the line out back. Not allowing clothes lines is a stupidity.
loading....