Reflections on Mom and the Right to Dry

My sister and I often comment about our mother's lessons she taught 6 children. One I thought of today, while the sky was sunny and the wind light but constant, was how to hang clothes on the line. While growing up, we had an aluminum 4-sided one, maybe collapsible contraption. I don't remember for sure because it was always up.  For awhile, we attended Catholic school - wearing white shirts before permanent press, handkerchiefs, navy blue pants or jumpers. I think I remember one of the winter chores was to shovel a path clear of snow to the line, the resulting stiff boards of hung clothing is another story... I digress.
Starting on the inside, one hung the more intimate garments - underwear and socks. I think the idea was to not offend your neighbors with those intimate items flapping in their faces. Moving outwards from the center, you hung groups of clothing - all the shirts, upside down, all the jeans and pants. It would look better if the display went from the smallest sizes to the larger. Then came the facecloths, hand towels and bath towels. Another method was to differentiate between the colors and the whites. I remember my mother, clothes pulled out of the washer and organized on her arm, with a handful of clothespins, tacking up load after load onto the clothesline. The result was an organized, ordered, and appealing reflection of domestic work. Household folk art.
So today, I think of Mom as I hang clothes - the smaller short-sleeved shirts, then the long sleeved ones, the towel, and the sheets. The lingerie is hung on an old rack in the laundry room though, out of site of the neighborhood.
So I walked around the neighborhood today seeing what was drying.

A woman I chatted with said she remembers her mother re-doing her clothespins because she hadn't quite gotten it right. (I've done that with John!)












The Right to Dry is a grassroots movement advocating for people in communities to be able to dry their clothes outside to save energy and money. Some communities and home owner associations prohibit outside drying.

Legislation in Vermont allows Line drying.