Birds on a Wire

A neighbor told me this morning that when the house next door to him was for sale the owners asked him not to hang laundry on his clothesline because it would, “bring down their property value.” And, of course, many housing developments have the same anti-clothesline restriction. Is it some distant cultural memory of 19th century tenement buildings, an id-based Ralph Kramden, an intense fear of anything urban? Maybe this clever design by Fabian van Sprecklsen might tip the balance for the clotheslineophobes. The ends are shaped like telephone poles and the clothes pins are shaped like little birds. I’m tempted to pull out a saber saw and make a copy, but that would be stealing! Via Doornob, an inspiring design blog I highly recommend.

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10 Comments

  1. Oh cute!

    Yeah, there’s a Right to Dry movement brewing for folks that have HOA rules and whatnot preventing them from hanging wash. I live with a covenant, but thank goodness, clotheslines weren’t mentioned!

    I love hanging wash outside. It’s a welcome change to stand in the sun, listen to the birds, feel the soft breezes, and do something right for the planet, instead of chucking a wet load in the dryer and running off to another chore.

    I think as the gestalt consciousness leans green, Right to Dry will become a reality for everyone. In the meantime, if you got’em, hang’em. The more people that do it, the more acceptable it will be, right?

  2. Right To Dry! I love it. No way I could handle a covenant neighborhood. My children are too crazy! I use my solar/wind dryer all the time, plus I recently dug up my front lawn for vegetables (no sun in the back, though I have been growing veg surreptitiously in the flowerbeds for years, I needed more space and a fresh spot for the tomatoes.)

    I will say though, here in the humid southeast, drying outside can take days in the summertime. I dry on my indoor rack in the deep summer (and deep winter, for that matter.) Line drying is very convenient; hang it and forget it.

  3. I’m wondering why is he not writing a letter to FED. I bet, that FED’s policy is decreasing property value more than clothesline.

    For me neighborhood without clothesline is suspicious and I wouldn’t be willing to pay more money for the property. Why would I pay more if my fixed expenses (cost of electricity for drying in home) would be higher?

    That’s not common sense…

  4. “Mommy, how did they get their clothes up on the telephone wire?” (I show my age.)
    We have reduced our electric consumption by over 20 kwh per month just by not using the dryer!

  5. We live in Colorado and there is actually a statewide law that forbids HOA bans on outdoor laundry drying. When the law passed, I believe that they cited various other states (maybe Florida, Utah and Hawaii?) that had similar laws. So it’s possble! The bigger issue here is that with 300 days of sunshine and 5% humidity, lots of people still toss everything into the dryer!

  6. I have not used a clothes dryer for two years. I dry everything on a couple clothes drying racks. This last month my husband bought me a clothes spinner. It spins almost FOUR CUPS of water out of every load of wash. Now it does not take days to dry when the humidity is up.

  7. that’s all fine and dandy until one actually hangs clothes on it. i notice the photo has a mere single white tea towel. yup. green decor if you ask me. what’s the neighbor gonna say when all my old ratty underwear and diapers are hanging off that cute thing?

  8. Suddenly I don’t feel so alone in having my neighbor ask me to stop composting because he was trying to sell his house and it would bring down the property values. And to get rid of my pumpkin patch because it, too, would bring down the property values. He wouldn’t be having trouble moving the place because he’s asking for twice as much as we payed for our place at the height of the housing bubble… no, it must be my garden which all the other neighbors love.

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