101. Clothes Dryer
Or, elegy for the clothesline
How many of us—or how few—have worn clothes that dried on a line? I did once, staying at an old cottage with my grandmother. The stiffness from line drying soon gave way to a pleasing, sweet-smelling comfort. The clothes relaxed onto me. They didn’t feel pummeled into softness.
But we’re suspicious of the clothesline in this country. We see it not so much as nostalgic as a relic of tenements and slums, an unwelcome, even distasteful reminder of life before modern conveniences. We see it—and countless HOAs have banned it—as something that looks poor.
For well over a century, we’ve hunted for ways to automate drying clothes. The first patented clothes dryer was invented in 1892; the mechanical version as we know it came 40 years later. We loved it, and only decades later did it begin to dawn on us how much that heat and motion costs. In 2014, the government added dryers to its ENERGY STAR program, saying that if every dryer sold were certified, we’d save more than $1.5 billion annually in electricity.
But hanging laundry on a clothesline was time-consuming drudgery that was heavily weather-dependent. Or was the drudgery of it—the sky-watching, the pinning of clothes—another meditative task we failed to appreciate? Clothes die a little with each tumble in the dryer, leaving a little more of themselves behind in the lint trap. Our dryers give us pricey convenience, softening our clothes by slowly erasing them.
Special thanks to Lynda Crist for suggesting the clothespin, which led to the dryer.
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!
Oh, the memories you've brought back to me. I remember well the clothesline in our back yard when I was growing up in Lubbock (yes, a less affluent neighborhood, so everyone had them) - this would be the early 1950s - stretching along the side fence, the street right there, since ours was the end lot on the block. And over there, across the street, the junior high school I so longed to grow into. The sheets billowing like sails in the wind. Not much worry about rain most days, out their in the arid high plains, but the sandstorms! And I also remember (or think I remember) the agitator washing machine, with a ringer at the top, that mother did the washing in - outside, of course. No room for it in the house. Even when coin laundries came in, mother would often bring the wet laundry home to dry on the line. Later on, she started sending it out, since she worked a full-time job. The laundry man would come in the unlocked back door, even when no one was home, to collect and deliver. The back door had to be unlocked, of course, because the milk man had to come in too. And the “housekeeper,” the once a week she came to clean. Many years later, after I'd gone away to college, the clothesline came down, and in its place, she planted a vegetable garden - which grew quite well. Wonder if the drippings from all those decades of home washed and dried laundry gave added fertility to the soil it dripped on? I hope you don't mind the theft, but I think you've lit the flame that will be turning into a Substack piece of my own. I'll give you credit for the inspiration.
My grandmother said, "If there's a patch of blue (in the sky), you can hang out the laundry."