Well into the ’70s they were ubiquitous in all but the most hoity-toity neighbourhoods. Clotheslines — those horizontal pulley contraptions holding the family linen firmly attached with wooden pegs — were a fixture of suburban backyards and apartment balconies.
They employed solar power and energy conservation long before those terms entered our vocabulary. Clotheslines were simply a way of saving money on sunny days. Dryers, of course, were used on rainy days.
Ironically around the time that environmental concerns became commonplace, clotheslines became somehow gauche. Dryers were used year-round without regard for finances or the environment. Maybe the manual labour of putting up laundry and taking it down again seemed somehow unsophisticated. But even more unsophisticated was the sight of shirts, slacks, skirts, socks, tights and underwear flapping in the wind like a string of pennants for a naked army. Across the continent, landlords and strata councils clamped down. Social pressure — often in the form of snooty looks and snotty remarks — effectively banned clotheslines just about everywhere else.
Environmental concerns were hung out to dry even if laundry wasn’t.
Now this primitive but far-sighted practice is making a comeback. The Ontario government wants to ban the clothesline ban. If the proposal becomes law, landlords and stratas will have to rescind their restrictions.
As for the informal ban, the tacit ban enforced by snooty looks and snotty remarks, Ontario energy minister Gerry Phillips wants to set an example. “We have a clothesline, both at our home and at our cottage,” he freely admits. “My neighbour has her clothes out all winter long.... Most homes right now can put up a clothesline and it’s worked pretty well. Let’s get on with it.”
Such a stirring call to action.
But for good purpose. As an Ontario government press release says, clotheslines combat GHGs: “Clothes dryers are among the most energy-consuming appliances in the home. On average, a standard clothes dryer will use about 900 kilowatt hours of electricity a year and can lead to as much as one tonne of greenhouse gas emissions. That means that over the course of a year, five clothes dryers could result in roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as an average size car.”
Plausible as that sounds, you can’t help wondering... just what is Ontario’s real agenda? Are they really combating another problem — a problem that’s unmentionable?
One that concerns what used to be called “unmentionables” — that is, underwear?
Writing in the National Post, Yoni Goldstein has uncovered the naked truth.
Ontario’s real purpose, he says, is to “stop people from stealing each others’ undergarments.”
“And if you don’t think there are scary panty bandits lurking in your neck of the woods, just waiting to strike, think again,” Goldstein warns. “Authorities in the state of Washington just caught themselves a panty stealer of their own — 24-year-old Garth Flaherty, who was charged with first-degree theft for lifting 1,613 pairs of panties, bras and other women’s underwear (that’s 93 pounds of unmentionables) from laundry rooms.
“If the government’s intention with the clothesline bill is to protect us from such dangerous offenders, then I’m all for encouraging hang-drying. Few of us have very much underwear to spare, and we’re too busy to sit around watching our skivvies dry for a full cycle, just to make sure none go missing. It’s time that our government protected us from underwear thieves. And with its decision to look into clotheslines, Ontario’s government has, finally, signaled its willingness to join the fight to eliminate this scourge from society.”
One question remains unanswered: How many GHGs are emitted per pound of underwear theft?
Postscript: Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty overturned the clothesline ban for ground-level homes on April 18, 2008.
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