New Documentary: Drying for Freedom, A Film About Clotheslines

We've posted about a wall-mount clothes drying rack. The comments circled back to where the clothesline discussion often comes back to: the debate between the right to hang clothes outside and the aesthetics of a neighborhood. We just watched the trailer for a new documentary about this very issue and seeing only five minutes of the film made us want to go shut off the hook-up to the dryer ASAP (see trailer after jump)...

Here's the premise of the film as stated on the Drying for Freedom Website: "By 2010 more than 50 million homeowners will be banned from line drying clothes outdoors for the sake of preserving property value and prudishness, the ban which infringes on a homeowners civil rights is contributing to the environmental and energy crisis, considering the dryer is responsible for 6% of the average households energy bill, as well as costing the U.S. an estimated $5 billion annually.

This is a film about freedom, communities and clotheslines. Drying For Freedom follows the fight for the right to dry clothes naturally revealing the protests, passions, politics and murders asking how did drying clothes become a life threatening, environmental social catastrophe? Why can’t we be free and dry clothes naturally?"

The clothesline movement, spearheaded by Project Laundry, includes Right to Dry bills across the country. Clearly the film is about a whole lot more than the environmental and economic impact of drying clothes without electricity. Still, one of our favorite eco-centered quotes from the trailer : "It's much uglier to look out the window and see rising sea levels." Enough said. Seriously, this little snippet alone has inspired us to go set up a clothesline on our back porch. Today.

(Image: Flickr member Bricolage.108 licensed under Creative Commons)