Laundry

In the home office upstairs is a retractable clothesline that we purchased unawares as part of a box lot at an auction several years ago. It was buried beneath a most excellent collection of 70’s Tupperware (with all matching lids accounted for—how cool is that?), and we paused a few seconds before we realized what it was. We tucked it away, already having a four-liner set up outside to hang laundry in the spring and summer, and the shower curtain rods sufficient for most things in the winter. That, plus a laundromat four miles up the road for the heavy stuff (sheets and blankets, throw rugs) kept us on track with our modest assertion that we didn’t need a dryer in the already-tiny mudroom where the washer lived.

We eventually installed it in the living room, mounting the reel on the left side of the doorway to the kitchen, then putting in a drywall screw on the right side of that same doorway and another one on the right side of the front door clear across the room so we could string the line twice and get the most length possible. This worked fine until guests raised a few eyebrows about socks and other “smalls” hanging above their heads during dessert. Of course, I’m kidding (no indoor laundry on days when we entertained). But it moved quickly from the living room to the upstairs guestroom/office where we could set free our damp wearables for hours, even days at a time, without a trace of apology or self-consciousness. An added bonus was how the damp laundry humidified the upstairs during the cold dry months, bringing an industrious new meaning to our experience of “cozy”. Sure, our things dried stiff as boards without the luxury of a warm tumble in the drum of some front-loading mechanical wizard, but a smart snap and a moment under a hot iron softened the fabric just fine, and left us feeling dryer-lessly virtuous (though I don’t know why. It’s no sin to own a dryer). For us, it was one less appliance making the outside meter spin like a top, one less motor to troubleshoot, one less hole cut in the side of the house for the vent.

We’ve lived here twenty years without a television, microwave, clothes dryer, doorbell (that’s what the peacock was for in the early years) and outdoor security lights (save for the porch light which does come in handy to shoo raccoons off the front deck), and don’t see them in our immediate future. Does that make us Luddites? I don’t think so. We’re not opposed to technology to help get a job done, as evidenced by the presence of a toaster on our kitchen counter (a Hello Kitty toaster, to be precise), a fairly new but turning-loved Instant Pot resting near the tea cabinet, an immersion blender, food processor, chain saw, hair dryer…I think you get the idea. And our laptop is as much a necessity for us as it probably is for most people; hooked up after dinner, we’re content to watch The Great British Baking Show or Ballykiss Angel while the water heats up for coffee. It also makes this website and accompanying blog posts much easier to distribute and manage.

Some of it is a space issue. The kitchen is done eating appliances large and small—there’d be no room to safely put anything else unless we got rid of the stove or the sink—and even with our almost-done-being-remodeled mudroom, a clothes dryer would be such a tight fit it wouldn’t be worth the effort to unload it from the truck and push it through the narrow doorframe to find its place next to the racks of granola-making supplies. On laundry day, it’s easier to lug the basket of wet jeans and towels up the steps to the home office, unspool the rubber-coated clothesline from its anchor on the south wall near the window and set to it. Any fleeting desires for the feel of a flannel shirt warm from the dryer evaporate in the face of a more perpetual longing to be keep this commitment going. Perhaps as we get older and less able to balance a laundry basket on our newly-replaced hips while gripping the stairway railing with an arthritic hand, we will change our minds. We’re not there yet, so no need to rush things.

This unintended auction purchase has become part of the inside landscape, as valued a tool as the two repurposed cottage cheese containers next to the kitchen sink that catch our eggshells, onion skins and apple cores for the compost bin. A retractable clothesline opened us up to a new possibility, one we would not have sought out on our own. Simple, effective, and it probably paid for itself after two uses. And while I prefer the scent of laundry freshened and dried outside on the line, I thought twice about making the indoor drying option a permanent plan two weeks ago. I was unpinning a cotton blanket from one of those four lines strung between two cast iron t-shaped posts when a hornet nailed the top of my right ear, sending the basket of laundry tumbling to the just-cut grass at my feet and a string of expletives flying from my mouth. I tore through the kitchen to the big freezer, grabbed and icepack and held it to the right side of my head, thinking ten minutes would do the trick. It took four days for the swelling to go down, and I spent more time during those four days noticing the shape of my ears than I ever had in my life. Important to note: the open ends of those cast iron posts have been capped off; I’m tempted to hang a “closed” sign from them just to make a point, but am not sure hornets can read.

Of course I’ve done more laundry since, and there’s a load hanging as I type this, swaying in a gentle breeze beneath a cloudless sky of the most brilliant blue. Get back on the bike, right? But the clothesline upstairs waits patiently to be employed again, a “just in case” presence I can count on during the next rainy (or hornet-y) day.

I’m glad we dug through all that Tupperware…