Nation & World | Clothesline bans stir rights battles | Seattle Times Newspaper: "Like the majority of the 60 million people who live in the nation's roughly 300,000 private communities, Saylor was forbidden to dry her laundry outside because many people viewed it as an eyesore, not unlike storing junk cars in driveways, and a marker of poverty that lowers property values.
In the past year, however, state lawmakers in Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have overridden these local rules with legislation protecting the right to hang laundry outdoors, citing environmental concerns, because clothes dryers use at least 6 percent of all household electricity consumed.
Florida and Utah already had such laws, and similar bills are being considered in Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia, clothesline advocates say."
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3 comments:
I support the lawmakers in Colorado, Maine, Hawaii, Utah, Vermont, and Florida myself. I also praise Maryland, Oregon, and Virginia. I think that HOAs should allow clotheslines and abandon the "cannot afford the dryer" mentality. We are running out of coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, and other fuels and we need to find ways to conserve and if a lot of people dry their clothes outdoors, it will save the remaining fuel and reduce climate change.
When I was on my hoa board years ago, we had quite a debate over clotheslines. We were making a booklet about ARC guidelines, and I was opposed to saying anything in the booklet that was contrary to state law. Other board members argued that clotheslines were ugly and that we should discourage them by putting a "no clotheslines" rule in the booklet, despite the law; since homeowners weren't familiar with the law, they wouldn't know the difference, and we could enjoy a clothesline-free community. The "no clothesline" rule made it into the booklet.
To be honest, though, there's not as much desire for clotheslines in Florida's humid climate.
Sooner or later all humans will go back to drying their clothes on a line. Maybe it'll take a few thousand years, but it will happen.
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