Save your clothes, cash and the environment with an indoor or outdoor clothesline.
What is it with us? We can’t wait to air our dirty laundry in public but scorn hanging clean laundry outdoors to dry. Years ago I lived in the heart of Montreal’s Latin Quarter yet had a clothesline running from my back balcony to a post on the lane—and so did everyone else. Here in Vancouver, I can’t remember the last time I saw laundry flapping in the wind. A 2007 StatsCan Environment Survey shows the percentage of B.C. residents drying clothes on a line or rack at just 54 percent; in P.E.I. it was 75 percent.
A common objection is that clotheslines are eyesores, but sophisticated Europeans and Australians are way ahead of us in clothesline use, according to Jeanne Mikita, who founded Vancouver’s Sundog Clotheslines last year. ”They are using all sorts of innovative clothesline designs, and we are hooked on gas and electric dryers,” she says in an article on BC Hydro’s website. The clothes dryer is the home appliance second only to the refrigerator in energy consumption according to BC Hydro, which recommends air-drying on a line or rack.
A Capilano University geographer who has travelled the world, Mikita’s search for the perfect clothesline led her to launch a company providing the best models to Canadians. Sundog offers an amazing variety of indoor and outdoor lines and racks plus installation. There are no restrictions against clotheslines in Metro Vancouver, though bylaws or restrictions may affect the type and location of clotheslines for renters or strata homeowners. Sundog’s website lists phone numbers for bylaw offices of Metro Vancouver municipalities. Talk to your neighbours about it—Sundog offers discounts for group orders of five or more.
Check out Sundog Clotheslines www.sundogclotheslines.com.
Photo: Mantas Ruzveltas / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
