Third day of green watching. Lots to observe. I will focus on the dryer bit.
If I was a good green girl, I would unplug our dryer, as suggested by hubby and Green Guru, Prad. And I would quit machine drying, cold turkey. When Prad raised the possibility, last week, I screamed. Absolutely no way, was I going to spend the time, pinning ten – pairs? what was I thinking? it’s underwear, not socks, girl!- underwear, ten shirts, to the freaking line. I’m ok with big items like sheets and large towels. But the small stuff? forget it!
I may be working my way out of conspicuous consumption, but convenience consumption? not any time soon . . .
I know, I know. Green is really hard. But I’m not sure using a clothes dryer counts as convenience consumption; depending on your schedule and room to hang dry and other things, using the dryer may be necessary, or at least a massive increase in convenience. One of my criteria for convenience consumption was that the increase in convenience was marginal.
I think it’s next to impossible to get people out of “convenience consumption”. If you, of all people, has a hard time doing it, I think that almost proves it for the general case.
I think the only way out for this kind of consumption is either make it sustainable by itself (e.g. have this kind of energy come from clean sources), or provide a less energy-intensive but either equal or more convenient solution. We should work on both fronts of course.
I’m personally really intrigued by the idea of “managed living”, in which you simply don’t have to worry about laundry. The interesting thing is that if people would eliminate both their non-necessary and non-convenience consumption, and also stop would driving around in cars like mad (work from home, or closer to home), lots of people (or maybe all?) would have enough money to pay for household professionals. It would be their task and honor to think up of energy efficient solutions.
Because in the end, I think that you search for convenience because you feel laundry is not worth spending so much time on. It’s certainly not a source of pride. It’s not your job, not your primary role in this world.
I have earlier described my vision for a completely green coliving/coworking resort. I believe such resorts can be very profitable, and I expect such options to become available in the coming years, if they don’t exist already. You would have to give up your normal home/work/car lifestyle though. It requires some psychological flexibility to make the one-time switch, but after that, it would be far, far more convenient than the old way of living. I’m already sold on the concept. 🙂
Imagine never having to worry about anything but adding value as a professional… Isn’t that bliss?
Really, separate households are a clumsy way of living, and a big (but overlooked) obstacle to sustainability. I see it as the last standing institution in the historical transition to a complete division of labor.
Interesting post you cite btw. I’ve left a comment.
If Prad wants the clothesline to be used instead of the dryer, Prad could always hang the clothes out himself. My woman has no objection to the things I do which reduce our consumption but involve extra effort – because I’m the one doing them. Now that they’re habit in our household, if I stopped she’d continue. So Prad needs to make up for your laziness by doing it himself, and then the household will acquire this new habit, and eventually you’ll do it, too.
Westerners generally are addicted to “convenience”, but their concepts of what is “convenient” are a bit warped. Apparently to be on the train with smelly strangers is “inconvenient”, but to be stuck in traffic for hours with smelly cars is not. Buying takeout and then having a heart attack at 45 is “convenient”, but making your own dinner from fresh ingredients and having a good quality of life until 70 is not. And so on.
Westerners are also so addicted to consuming that they’ll take even when they can’t use it, so much so that… at a buffet… see here.
Agree totally with Kiashu… a lot
I wanted to write also that it is not only Americans that are addicted to convenience… all westerners are as Kyle notes.
Another thing on convenience : people find it convenient to watch tv whereas books would be much more profitable for everybody (yeah, I am no huge fan of the telly… )
Don’t focus on the clothes; focus on the day around you. Putting out laundry on the line is a good time to smell the breeze, watch the clouds, the hummingbirds, or think about what I’ve been reading. If I think about “Gee, another stupid sock,” I’m bored and it becomes drudgery.
I usually use the clothes-hanging or collecting time as a time to check on the plants in the yard. Hanging undies becomes… well, not glamorous, but less dull, if there are pretty flowers or beans sprouting up or something.
I’m not willing to give up the dryer completely either. What I AM willing to do is give up the belief that clothes have to be washed every time they are worn. I wear my pants multiple times before washing. Shirts a few times if they smell okay in the pit area. Bras more than once too if they smell okay. Socks and panties are the only items of clothing that must be washed with each wearing. Oh, and cloth pantiliners. TMI? So even though I use the dryer, I still probably use it a lot less than most Americans.
Beth, I am with you. It also helps with my laziness. I do laundry for myself about once a week, at the most. Whenever I run out of underwear, basically. It boggles my mind, to see my teenage daughters only wear their jeans once for instance, and then throw them in the dirty laundry. What happens when clothes are cheap, and you have lots of them . . .
Jenrob, Kyle, of course, you have the right idea, with your poetic clothes hanging suggestion. I do remember very vividly the pleasure of being out and hanging clothes with my mother, and my grandmother also. Nowadays, our drying rack is in the mechanical room. Not exactly an enticing place. But it’s conveniently placed, in the room, next to the laundry room. What we would need is a clothesline outside in our yard.
Kyle, one’s idea of convenience is very much influenced by culture. Which is why, Meryn, I think your idea of shared living has a long way to go before it sees the light of day, in Western countries. We have such a personal sense of space. “My room”, “my car”, “my house”. Giving that up would be the ultimate sacrifice in terms of convenience. Some of my progressive green friends, here in California, have made noise about starting such a community. That was a while back.
Thoughtbasket, so many issues are wrapped up in this dryer vignette. Not just cultural, but also economic, and awareness. Right now, people do not feel the pain of using their dryer. Electricity is still too cheap. There is also no easy way to connect dryer’s use with spikes in electricity use, and increase in dollar spending, in real time. Lots of players in energy monitoring space working on latter problem.
Marguerite, the idea of co-housing does not entail that you would not have your own room. In fact, it could feel like a luxurious hotel. Can it get more convenient than that? It doesn’t have to be like the “flower power” of the sixties…
Also, you don’t need your own car if you’re driven anywhere you want to go (up to the airport or train station that is). Yet, you don’t have to drive because you’re living and working happy in the resort. But the mobility – just in case – is there.
But I acknowledge it’s a huge psychological hurdle to take. It could almost be called a “paradigm shift”… But then, so was the idea of working in a factory at the advent of the industrial revolution.
I tried to hang dry my clothes on Tuesday as a part of my “grandma challenges.” I only managed to get one load on the line. The rest went into the dryer. Despite my failed first attempt, I am going to try to commit to 4 weeks of hang drying my clothes because I think I can learn some valuable lessons. One such lesson is that I own far too many clothes as do the other 4 people in my house.
I read a terrific little book about a woman who grew up on a farm during the Great Depression. The book is called Little Heathens. She has a whole chapter devoted to laundry. I thought for sure she would describe laundry as an all day chore but it wasn’t! At one time people had fewer clothes and wore each item mulitiple times. Therefore they did not do nearly as much wash. Everyone also pitched in to help so that it was washed and put on the line before other chores/acitivities had to be done.
I think it is interesting that the dryer is supposed to be a time and labor saving device but is not since I now do so much wash!
Thanks April. Amazing how technology has not really saved us any time, as we have found new ways to complicate our lives! Great point. No matter where one starts, it seems like consumerism is at the roots of a lot of our current problems. If we spent less time buying stuff, we would have less things to take care of, and more time to actually enjoy life.
I totally agree with Kiashu – Prad should just do the needful and make it a household habit.
The rest of you guys, I’m just amazed that so many of you find it so difficult to line dry clothes! Come on! It’s one of the easiest things you can do!
I run a load of laundry before I go to bed — then I hang it up before I go to work and it’s dry when I get home. It’s the easiest thing in the world.
Even in the winter, I hang up my clothes on hangers on the shower curtain bar in the bathroom — since I swim MWF, I can do laundry at night and let it hang up for 2 days uninterrupted in the shower. It takes longer to dry and sheets end up drying over the bedroom door but I can’t imagine using the dryer. The electric dryer costs about $10 per load to dry stuff — it’s that inefficient.
I’ve been air drying my clothes most of my life — we even had lines in the basement at my mom’s house. I even irritated the last boyfriend I lived with because he hated that I wanted most of my stuff line dried and he refused to do it — he also refused to *not* wash my laundry even if I had it in a separate basket and ruined a lot of my stuff by overdrying it (boo! no, he didn’t last long with his control issues).
I like hanging my panties out in the yard – it feels so subversive.
Thanks Jenn, for the nudge. Love the idea of hanging panties out. You just gave me an idea. How about having a block party where all the women hang dry their panties in their front yards. How would that be for getting the message out?
I’ve been making progress on hanging clothes out to dry rather than using the dryer. My son’s going through a bed wetting phase, so the laundry is pretty much daily, and weather’s still pretty hot around here.
My inlaws think we’re nuts, but they see clotheslines as low class, associate them with poverty or something. Given when they grew up, that’s no surprise to me.
That’s one of the things that needs to be overcome; the perception of doing things in an environmentally friendly way is too often seen as a sign of poverty or being an eco-nut.
ooh – I like the panties in the front yard idea! 🙂
I grew up with clothes lines in North Central Montana. Clothes are board stiff at -40.
Several years ago I tried to tally our energy use as accurately as possible and quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible (for example – what is your share of your state, federal and local government’s consumption?, what is the energy path of everything you use including things like water and sewage..) What I really needed to do was think about the big picture and understand what items were accounting for 80% of my use and deal with them with greater urgency. The detailed view is, to me, like a student writing down an answer to ten significant digits on their calculator when two are sufficient.
For us it was (a) moving into a much smaller place and making that place efficient, (b) moving to a single car and minimizing its use, flying as little as possible (this was the biggie for us carbon footprintwise. We also made a decision to engage with the younger generation in our spare time.
Meryn, are you saying that you should get to do professional work while “household professionals” drive you around and do your laundry? Or am I misunderstanding your co-living proposal.
I’m sure we can come up with ways to share resources without creating such hierarchies.
Jenn, or other eco-chicks reading this blog, who is willing to take up the panties project? I think it would be really cool. My plate is full right now, but I would love to see someone else do it . . .
Steve, agree with you on big picture hierarchy. What I am suggesting with this project is not that others take it on as well, necessarily. Rather I am using it as a source of insights for personal energy efficiency solutions.
Stephanie, while I was in Tuscany this summer, I wrote a piece about clothes line the differences from country to country. You are right that cultural norms play a huge role.
I am thinking of biking, and how now biking is becoming quite hip, in California at least. Maybe the same will happen to clotheslines? After one of us starts a “panties” out movement. 🙂
We had a “diapers out” line for a few days…but it didn’t last long…Our new baby goes so often that all of her cloth diapers are soiled by midday and they HAVE to be washed and put in the dryer bc they are so fluffy it takes them an entire day in direct sunlight to dry…and we can’t afford more of them…
sigh
i really thought it would be very easy to keep up with but she is great producer of effluent… 🙂
Regarding the tumble dryer, there is another, better way- use a spin dryer, which uses approximately 1/100th of the energy that a conventional
tumble dryer does. More information is available at
http://www.laundry-alternative.com/spin_dryer_release.htm
Of course line drying is the most energy efficient, but realistically not everybody is willing to do this. On the other hand spin dryers use almost no energy and are very easy to use.