They are an old-fashioned device that could save household energy as well as machine-damaed and worn-out clothing.
Unfortunately, they are also banned in several U.S. communities.
Just try installing a clothes line in Irvine or any Orange County gated community and see what happens. Torture is allowed and encouraged for even thinking such a thing.
]
Most would agree with Richard Monson, president of the California Association of Homeowners Associations, who told Legal Affairs magazine that a clothes line in a neighborhood can lower property values by 15 percent.
“Modern homeowners don't like people's underwear in public,” he explained. “It's just unsightly.”
That's too bad for families seeking different ways to reduce their carbon footprint and save money by reducing their energy usage. Using an electric clothes drier can account for up to 10 percent of a household's total energy use. While the EPA and environmental organizations concerned with energy conservation and energy efficiency have been telling people to purchase Energy Star appliances for years, simple outdoor clothes lines are much cheaper and carbon neutral.
That is why, according to this blog post, there is now a pushback forming by people who want their clothes lines and are willing to stop their communities and states from enacting or enforcing bans against them.
“You can pry my clothes line and spring-fresh undies from my cold dead hands” is probably too long for a bumper sticker for these folks.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.