We All Have Our Reasons

I was expecting a call the other day, so I took the phone out back with me. Andrea was surprised to hear that I was hanging my laundry on the line while we spoke.

“Oh, honey, don’t you have a dryer?”

“Um… yeah. There’s this thing you may have heard of, it’s called Climate Change.”

“Oh, that,” she said.

Andrea is a sales rep for a community solar company, which installs arrays of solar panels on unused farmland. She earns a commission anytime a customer opts to receive their electricity from a solar farm, which may cover many acres and power hundreds of homes. Sometimes my work overlaps with hers. I help villages in upstate New York access state grants for clean energy.

If all of us had to do just one thing to help the planet, then I suppose Andrea and I would be off the hook; but our beautiful green Earth is in trouble and needs us to be fully committed, not just with one action, but changing the entire way we think about our relationship to energy, to food, to transportation, to waste.

Andrea is certainly aware of climate change, but awareness does nothing unless it’s followed up by action. Also, I suspect she only memorized enough green sound bytes to bolster her sales pitch. That’s why I don’t mind razzing her just a bit.

“The dryer is one of the biggest energy hogs in the home,” I said, “right after the refrigerator. And as you no doubt know, it’s not enough for all of us to go solar, because renewables won’t run our energy intensive society. We have to cut down the demand.”

“Yeah,” said Andrea, “but I’m old.”

We all have our reasons...

...and some of them are legitimate: I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m in school, I’m a caretaker for elderly parents, or I have young kids at home running me ragged. In our busy lives, most of us don’t have the emotional space to think about climate change, so we just cross our fingers and hope that “they” will come up with something and it will all somehow come out all right.

Here’s one possibility: you know those Unidentified Flying Objects the military has filmed doing all kinds of impossible things, like zipping around faster than the speed of sound, but without generating a sonic boom? Just imagine if those UFOs were packed full of aliens that, out of the kindness of their little green hearts, could pull off some kind of techno-miracle that would reverse climate change!!

Okay, so maybe we need a plan B.

Because unfortunately, the climate doesn’t care about our excuses, our rationalizations, our little green alien fantasies, or even our legitimate reasons for needing a break.

Lesson learned number one: if you want people to do something, there has to be some benefit that improves their lives. For instance, in New York state, people get 10% off their electric bill if they sign up for solar.

Lesson learned number two: People don’t respond to negative messages. Environmentalists’ dire warnings didn’t change people’s behavior.

Lesson learned number three: If people are made to feel guilty or attacked, they stop listening.

So let me offer some reasons to hang-dry your laundry, but to make everyone more comfortable, I’ll explain it all to Andrea. In reality, our conversation ended with my fun fact about a dryer’s energy usage. My writer’s embellishment is to make her the stand-in stress doll, so that we can calmly assess the facts about why it’s beneficial to hang-dry your laundry and avoid—ahem!—catastrophic climate change.

Andrea’s reasons for not hang-drying her laundry may go something like this:

“It’s super inconvenient, and anyway I don’t have the set-up, and my neighborhood association forbids it, and I don’t want my nosy neighbors checking out my undies flapping in the breeze.”

These are all perfectly good reasons why you absolutely cannot start hanging your laundry. Now I’m going to show you why you should do it anyway. Let’s start with the question of convenience.

In conventional laundering, you wash your clothes (in cold water, right? Right?), and when the machine has stopped spinning out the excess moisture, you transfer the clothes to the dryer. You set it for the desired time and walk away. It’s possible you’re super organized and you set a timer, but I’m pretty sure that most people have experienced mild dismay when they realize the dryer stopped spinning some time ago and now the clothes are wrinkled. Perhaps you have one of those super-duper newfangled dryers with the “touch-up” setting: you throw a wet washrag in, push the button and walk away! (how convenient!) Yeah, great, until you get busy with something else and you miss the bell and your clothes are all wrinkled—again. How many times do you run the touch-up cycle before it becomes decidedly inconvenient?

Andrea pipes up, “That’s exactly why I wear polyester and fleece and cotton that’s been treated with wrinkle-free chemicals.”

Great plan! Except that every time you wash clothes made from synthetic fibers, you release millions of microfibers into the water. The tiny particles sail right through the filters at waste water treatment plants, and they wind up in the ocean, where they do serious damage to marine animals. If you eat fish, you may even get to ingest some of those very microfibers you contributed. Besides, polyester is scratchy. And do you really want chemicals next to your skin? Cancer is definitely inconvenient. Why not just wear soft, comfy, organic cotton?

“I can’t do that,” says Andrea. “I hate ironing.”

The great thing about hanging your clothes on the line is everything winds up looking like it was professionally ironed. Your cotton sheets? Crisp and wrinkle free.

“Wow, that sounds good. I gave up on cotton sheets a while back and settled for micro-fiber.”

Much more luxurious to sleep on pure cotton — appropriately sourced, of course. And while we’re talking about luxury, how about investing in some bandanas to be used as napkins?

(Fun fact: Americans throw away about 3,000 tons of paper towel waste each year. As it decomposes in landfills, the paper waste releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. If every household used just one less roll of paper towels per year, about 550,000 trees would be spared.)

I get my bandanas at WholesaleForEveryone.com. I have several dozen in various dark paisley prints so that they don’t show stains from tomato sauce or wine. How luxurious, to use cloth napkins at every meal! They dry in a jiffy on the line, and when you take them down, like everything else, they look ironed. In wintertime, just drape them over the sides of the laundry basket, and they’ll dry pretty quickly in a warm room.

“Okay, but what about this issue of the neighbors eyeballing my undergarments?”

In my rural area, lots of people dry their clothes on the line. It’s a tradition, and they do it with pride. Still, one does have to wonder why a person would let the whole neighborhood ogle their oversized nylon panties. The solution is either to place the laundry line at the back of the house, or to invest in a clothes drying rack to keep your intimates out of sight. That’s how I tend to dry the small stuff— the socks, the undies, the undershirts. A drying rack is also how you solve the problem of neighborhood associations’ climate-unfriendly rules, and how you dry your textiles in the winter time. One of my neighbors has a deluxe model that they park in front of the wood stove.

“What if it rains?”

Yeah, that used to happen at first, but having lost my investment several times, I started checking the weather online to find out if it was a good laundry day. Another side benefit of being aware of the weather is that you always know when to carry an umbrella.

“Everybody’s all ‘blah-blah-blah’ about the fresh scent of laundry dried on the line, but that’s not such a selling point. Today’s detergents have fragrances that last for days. There’s even one called “Fresh Breeze.”

Andrea, let me explain a little something about fragrances. Through a ridiculous loophole, they’re not regulated. If a company wants to hide an ingredient, they call it a fragrance. Some perfumes actually contain neurotoxins. (How about a new designer scent called Brain Damage!) If a detergent manufacturer realizes that a pesticide causes the fragrance to linger on your towels for a week, it’s added to the formula. We consumers need to stop asking for things that seem to defy natural limits, like aromas that last for days and weeks, because if we knew the actual consequences, we’d realize the price is too steep. By the way, you can find out about how benign or toxic your household products are at the Environmental Working Group’s site, EWG.org, and they even have an app now for your phone so you can comparison-shop at the grocery store.

“So should I buy the plastic jug of detergent without fragrance or dyes? That’s good, right?”

Well… plastics are harmful, and recycling them has become more and more difficult. The manufacture of plastic contributes to tiny particles called microplastics making their way to the ocean. And a jug of eco-friendly detergent runs about $8 to $10. Not cheap. So I decided to make my own. I found a recipe for homemade liquid laundry detergent online. I tried the dry version of this recipe, but since I wash my clothes in cold water, the grated soap flakes didn’t dissolve.

Liquid Soap Recipe

• 1 bar soap, grated
• 2 cups washing soda
• 2 cups Borax
• 4 ½ gallons hot water
• 5-gallon plastic bucket

Add the soap to hot water in a saucepan on the stove top, and heat it till the flakes dissolve. When it’s liquid, add it to the other ingredients in the bucket, stir it up, then let it sit overnight.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it… what you wind up with is a bucketful of gelatinous glop. However, it does the job. And it’s super cheap. Borax and Washing Soda run about $5 a box. A bar of Castile soap won’t break the bank. And you never again have to worry about what fragrance has been hidden in your detergent, a dastardly practice that even supposedly green companies can succumb to in their quest to accumulate filthy lucre.

Andrea snorts, “Making my own cleaners? No way I’m going to that much trouble.”

Then opt for a powdered detergent that comes in a carton. Laundry powders scrub more microfibers loose, but filling up the washer reduces agitation and releases fewer of the dastardly microfibers.

“What about washing in cold water? Does stuff really get clean?”

Absolutely. When needed, I use a spray spot remover.

Andrea rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like a green product.”

You’re right! There’s always room to improve, and I need to research whether there’s a better option. For now, it tackles the tough dirt on blue jeans, and it’s preferable to using toxic detergents or hot water.

“When I’ve left my towel out in the sun, it gets all crunchy feeling. I don’t want crunchy clothes.”

You’re right! I tumble my clothes in the dryer for 5 minutes after they come out of the washing machine, which softens them up. I’ve experimented doing this with heat and without, and it seems to work about the same, so by all means, skip the heat. Some people vigorously shake their clothes, and that works too, but not quite as well.

“What about the sun fading your clothes?”

Hasn’t really been a problem, but if I’m concerned, I turn clothes inside out. For whites, I want the sun on those garments for natural bleaching.

“Why not just use bleach?”

Back away from the bleach, Andrea! It’s a poison and it harms both you and the environment. Remember, cancer is the ultimate inconvenience.

“I’m almost sold on line drying. Any other benefits?”

How about saving gobs of money off your electric bill? And your clothing bill, too, because washing your clothes in cold water and hanging them to dry extends the life of the garment and prevents shrinkage.

And there’s one other benefit worth mentioning, and it starts with a sad fact: Americans spend 93% of their time indoors. This came out in a study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency to measure the effect of indoor pollution. Hanging your laundry on the line gets you outside, if only briefly. You may know the benefit of spending more time out of doors—such as improved mood and escape from indoor toxins—but you know how it is… you get busy in your home office, and before you know it, between emails and phone calls and yet again another Zoom call, you realize you haven’t set foot outside all day.

As I hang my laundry, sunshine gives me a dose of vitamin D. Bees are buzzing in the garden and the magical bird is singing. Everyone else calls it a Wood Thrush, but that name doesn’t capture the flute-like tones that emanate from the woods. It truly sounds like a tiny musician trilling on a flute in the forest. The Wood Thrush is a bird under pressure. They’re prone to breaking their little necks on windows. Their habitat is being destroyed. Pesticides are killing the insects they depend upon. The Wood Thrush requires stretches of continuous forest, which are becoming more and more scarce, but which exist near my house. We sleep with the windows open in summer so that the cool breeze caresses our faces all night, and we awaken to the trilling of the magical bird.

It’s always such a relief each spring when the migrating birds return. I’m scared to death that one spring they won’t come back, and the Silent Spring that Rachel Carson predicted decades ago could finally arrive.

Hang-drying my laundry is one small step to ensure there will always be a Wood Thrush singing in the forest.