Leaving the clothes on the line

It’s been raining at night lately, kind of like in Camelot. After a long day at work, in the garden, swimming or doing all of the Important Summer Things, it’s lovely to lie in bed and listen to water pouring from the sky.

Until we start the mental survey: Is the hay covered? Did the boy put his birthday bike in the barn? Did we leave tools, and coffee cups and badminton racquets and hats lying around outside?

“Is the chicken coop door closed?” my husband asks. It is.

“Is the laundry still on the line?” I ask. Yep. It is, too.

We are committed to our clothes line. There’s no reason to use energy to dry clothes when we have the sun to do it for us. It saves money and electricity, reduces pollution and it’s easy.

By most estimates, you’ll save about $100 a year in energy costs by line-drying your laundry. Electric dryers contribute to CO2 emissions in a big way, around 5 pounds per load. There’s no such thing as an Energy Star dryer because they all use about the same amount of energy — too much. Line drying also will make your clothes last longer, they’ll smell nice, and you won’t need to buy dryer sheets.

And you can make your kids hang out the wash.

It’s getting them to take it in that’s the problem.

This time of year, when I get home from work I head straight to the garden. That is, after dropping off my lunch box and changing my shoes, and accepting the ecstatic greetings of the dogs, the mooed hello of the ox and possibly a hug from a kid.

There are generally beans to pick, and broccoli, corn and tomatoes, and plants to check for ripening or for bugs. I like to look around and pick what we’ll eat for dinner. My husband likes to show me what he’s transplanted where — the new greens, the fall potatoes.

By the time I actually get into the house and we get dinner onto the table, it’s getting near dark. That’s about when I think to ask if anyone brought the laundry in.

Too late. What had been dry at 4 is damp with dew at 7, and we might as well leave it out overnight.

“It’s going to be a dry day, low humidity tomorrow,” my husband assures me, sounding positive.

“It won’t matter if no one brings the clothes in again,” I say, because I am negative. And experienced. At my house, clothes have been left on the line for a week, through numerous showers and dryings, so long that they have to be washed again. Is that any way to save money, or the planet?

My children, of course, are extremely busy on the long summer days while I’m at work and my husband is in the garden or the hay fields. The kids have to have picnics, and explore the woods, wade in the stream, and play chess, draw or read in the flower garden. The teen has dance classes and a visiting beau, and the boy has forts and hideouts that need to be built, and a bike he can ride in the woods. They might have to go swimming.

It’s a wonder they have time to hang out the wash, and no wonder at all that they don’t have time to remember to bring it in.

I’ve taken to calling midday from work to remind them, and leaving notes on the kitchen table. One day last week, they took half the clothes off the line and put them into the laundry basket. The other half they left on the line, towels and socks, which they said were still damp.

They were damper still after the midnight downpour. The clothes they had managed to take off the line were also damp, because they left the basket outside.

The next day I left another note, with a list of chores. “Do these things or Risk Certain DEATH!” I wrote. My husband thought it was excessive. I drew a few little hearts around the last word.

But it didn’t matter. It rained twice during the day, a lovely rainwater rinse for the clothes. And another reason to leave them out for another night.