apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I've always thought clotheslines were charming. Even if they were ugly, who cares? Dryers are responsible for 6-10% of your household energy bill... that makes clotheslines A LOT more attractive to me.

I really can't wrap my head around what is so ugly about a clothesline. Just thinking of them evokes memories of running through the clothes as they hung as a child (much to my mother's chagrin) or walking out onto my sunny hotel balcony in Lisbon and seeing the neighbors bedsheets soaking up the sun by the river...There's a lot of things I find to be eyesores (like houses whose facade is 75 percent garage door, or homes with hummers parked outside) that I wouldn't think it's right to ban or protest.

i like clotheslines, too! bummer that the crazy few ruin Homeowner association rules for the rest of us who like them :)

Ahhh, lovely! Makes me wish I was on vacation! And, a simple clothesline does evoke memories of summertime as a child. Even laundry in Italy is beautiful!

From December to April I had an Italian university exchange student living with my family and I.

In her 23 years, she had never used a dryer. I explained to her the necessity of using one, as we live in Canada, and things don't dry very well in below freezing weather. I got the distinct impression that she was not very impressed by them.

these people must not have neighbors like mine. every time we tried to dry the clothes outside on the balcony they end up having to be washed all over again because they smell like smoke from all the people smoking out their windows. YUCK.

If you can't dry your clothes outside for whatever reason, you can still use an inside drying rack. We live in an apartment complex and use folding drying racks to dry our clothes. We move them around the apartment or onto the patio depending on where the sun is. You don't need outside air to dry your laundry!

My granny had a drying rack that she'd use in winter.

Since she had a small home, the dining room table would fold up and go against the wall and she'd use the sunny dining room to dry her clothes.

The things that grab my eyes in that top image are not the clotheslines. It's the functional shutters for doors and windows.

I LOVE SHUTTERS!

And the use of awnings and balcony drapes.

In many countries that use line drying instead of dryers there is a spinner the get more water out of washed clothes. They are in laundromats and homes.

After wet clothes come out of the washer or bucket (a preferred method for jeans, just soaking) they go in a spinner. It is a small intense version of the machine spin setting and gets a lot of water out of the clothes.

It makes line drying much easier.

I'm italian, and appears so strange to me that a dryer is necessary to dry my clothes...
Bed sheets are washed only when it's sunny outside (luckily this happens often in Italy!), they dry in less then a couple of hours. Thinking green, there is something weird in installing solar panels to get elettricity to dry my clothes... it's easier to put them outside and wait!