Last summer, I loaded a heap of wet laundry into the dryer, shut the door, set the time and hit On. Nothing. Again. Nope. I checked the cords, electric cord, the propane level in the tank outside.
A few months before I’d run out of propane– rural life note, propane fuels the dryer and cooktop– because I’d forgotten to check the gauge. I discovered it by turning on the range and not getting a flame. At that point by law they have to come and do a line check as well as putting more propane (expensive) than you probably want or need in your tank, so I was pretty determined that wasn’t going to happen again, and also three months later running out of propane was unlikely unless there was a huge leak, and in that case the house likely would have blown up in the meantime.
So. The big front loading dryer was kaput. The budget wasn’t fatty enough to support a repair much less a replacement. It was July. I live up on a hill with almost a perma breeze. I’d been meaning to ask someone to help me get a clothesline up for years. Now it was time to just rig it up. I’m not handy but what I lack in that regard I try to make up for in brute resourcefulness. And because necessity is truly the mother of invention I have gotten better over the years.
From Herrington’s a few packs of clothesline. An old farm pole at the top of the property provided one base, one of the split rail posts of the fence the other, and back again. A simple matter of wrapping, tying, pulling taut. The posts are about my height so we’re not talking high up. I’d like it to be higher. But it’s long enough to get a load up. I can never get it quite as taut as I’d like and have to tighten from time to time. But it functions.
It was another manual labor chore that at high season– preserve production, fruit gathering, market vending– I really didn’t need. My increasingly creaky body told me so. Carrying heavy loads of wet laundry up the hill to hang them, remembering (and timing accordingly) to go back up to turn large pieces like sheets that had to be doubled over, then back up to take them down– being sure not to forget until after nightfall when everything would get damp again. That happened once and I just left it all up for the next day, which fortunately was clear.
Which brings me to another aspect of outside drying, watching the weather. I was fortunate that we had a largely gorgeous, mostly sunny and dry summer. But there were a few times when weather and time didn’t dovetail, laundry backed up and ended up hanging throughout the house. That’s ok, we’re not a family of six, I could deal with it. But it required planning, and some market mornings I was out getting it up before the sun had even come over the hill.
It was a lot, whatever the family size. And when November came, the sun sliding south, the winds growing cold and damp, I bit the bullet and got the dryer repaired. Which thankfully was reparable and not as bad as I feared, and about 1/4 the cost of replacing.
But I think I put it off as long as I did not only to save, but because I had grown to appreciate the act and what it provided. Dry laundry with “free” energy, obviously. And then there were things heretofore negative, like crispy bath towels, which I came to appreciate because they felt exfoliating. Whites that were yellowing bleached back to white (and disinfected, though not really an issue then!) by the sun. The act of clipping the laundry to the line propelled me back thirty years, to hanging laundry with my French mother-in-law in Provence, the dry heat pulsating around us, the air fragrant of lavender and rosemary, the cicadas nearly cacophonous. There, it was dry in about an hour.
Then this winter, I pulled something out of a drawer or closet, and it still held the fragrance of fresh air. You hear this advertised for fabric softeners and things, fresh air scent. Well it is a real thing. And it is lovely and unlike anything else. That it would hold in fabric over time was unexpected.
Early this spring, just after the stay at home went into place, I checked the propane level and saw it was getting low, and began hanging laundry again. We were having some fine weather, we were staying home and seemed to have time we didn’t even know existed. I hung sheets out and then put them back on the bed, and brought the sun and the wind inside to breathe while I slept.
Details I noticed with this laundry task I mightn’t have otherwise: like that the angle of the sun in late March drops it just behind the big fir trees (how tall they’ve grown!) around 4, putting the west end of the line in shade, but by mid-April you have until 5. Time was blurring so much that we could not remember what day it was, but Nature keeps her own.
I since have gotten a delivery of propane (I do need it to use the stove), but will continue to hang laundry. Even if you have just a small sunny patch outside where you can place a clothes rack, you might try it with small towels and t-shirts (and masks). Environment friendly, check. It also carries its own joy and the kind of calm only repetitive tasks can. I feel a connection to the women who’ve gone before, who survived terrible times of their own, and who too made use of the sun and the wind that is a great and simple gift to us all. In a world turned upside down, there is connective comfort in that.
