The Zen of the Clothesline

I air-dry my clothes. All of them, when weather permits. As it gets colder, my fingers get number as I hang them out and take them down, but I find myself enjoying the laundry much more. Odd, isn't it?

When I use the sun and wind to dry the clothes, I have to be much more aware of the weather over the next few days (should I do two loads today while it's sunny, or will there be more sunny days this week?). I have to slow down and think about the individual garments I hang. My clothesline is a double one, a single line run through a pulley at each end to double the hanging space. If I hang the clothes correctly, I get each side of the line at a different level, so I don't have one shirt behind another, or a towel blocking the sun from the pants behind it. I have to calculate the weight and the length of the clothes on each half of the line to keep items from being blocked, but also to keep heavier things from dragging on the ground. It is a thoughtful, mindful process, which makes me feel a connection to the earth and its processes, and to the power of the sun and wind. I am lucky that I am able to air-dry clothes, and that for me it is indeed a choice.

The sun in my backyard disappears shortly after noon, so I have to start the laundry day early and be mindful of where the sun is by what time. The position of the sun in the backyard changes with the seasons, too, so I'm more aware of the passage of time, not just on a small daily scale, but on the scale of seasons and years. If it's a windy day, sunlight is less essential to the drying process, though either one helps. As the seasons change, my schedule must change with it. It is calming to let go of that schedule, to let the sun determine when the laundry gets done.

Now that the temperature has fallen below freezing, I am back to using my dryer. The laundry once again feels like a burden, a chore that must be done. Perhaps I am only responding to the novelty of the clothesline, but I had a shorter one before this and never tired of it. Now that I can dry the clothes anytime, I feel like a robot, feeding the clothes into one machine, then another, in the endless, unchanging process of keeping five people in clean clothes. Interestingly, my children never ran out of underwear in the warmer weather, when I reliably did one load of laundry a day, but now too often I get frantic requests for things that haven't yet been washed. The process has lost its magic, and I feel much less connected with the earth. I look forward to the spring for so many reasons, but my purple clothesline beckons, and I can't wait to use it again.