I’m looking for an apartment to move into on September 5th, when my current lease ends, and I have to tell you, one of my top priorities is having a washer/dryer in the building.  For one thing, it’s convenient.  I don’t have the time or the inclination to sit at a laundromat, or to lug all my laundry all over Los Angeles.  (Though, if romantic comedies were to be believed, the laundromat is one of the best places in the world to meet a new potential hook-up, so maybe I should change my tune.)

But also, I really don’t have another option.  When I was interviewing with my current building manager about living in my current apartment, she looked at me and said very seriously that she wanted to give me a front unit that faced the street, because I didn’t look like the sort of person who would hang laundry up on the balcony.

Well, I wasn’t.  But if I had been, I would have been either evicted or moved to a back unit, or severely harassed at the least.  Why?  Because I’m bringing down the look of the building.

I have to admit, I didn’t give it a second thought at the time.  But lately, the question of hanging up one’s clothes to dry is being reintroduced into the national debate over how to be green.  (Hint: it ain’t exactly easy.)

The argument being made by many environmental activists is that it’s safer for the environment to dry your clothes in the sun.  They want to be able to encourage people to begin using clotheslines as an alternative laundry system, and reserve their dryers for occasional use — or give them up altogether.

The problem with this is that, much like my building manager, most homeowners’ associations and similar organizations have banned clotheslines outright.  Why’s that?

Because they make the neighborhood look poor.

And here’s where the politics of environmentalism gets interesting.

Modern Westerners (American and European alike) have gotten used to a lot of conveniences — conveniences which are all, frankly, quite modern.  In fact, the home and its technologies are modernizing at a rate unheard of until about 70 years ago.  But like most of modern technology, home technologies can also be a marker of status.  This, for example, is why Jell-O and aspic were so popular 50 or so years ago, despite being relatively disgusting foods.  (Dried cow hoofs, people.  Come on.)  Making gelatin requires a refrigerator, which was expensive, which was a status symbol because most people couldn’t afford it.  Same with big cars, washer/dryers, in fact most of the daily-use objects which are to blame for the current condition of our planet.

Nowadays, access to washers and dryers is pretty ubiquitous.  Most people have either a personal washer/dryer, or a laundromat nearby.  It’s not really much of a status thing anymore, in the literal sense that only people who are of high status can afford them.  But because technologies are evolving at this very high rate, most homeowners still think of clotheslines as indicative of poverty.  No one would ever advertise the fact that they didn’t have a dryer; it’s just too-too declasse.

There’s a lot of this kind of discrimination still going on.  A lot of jobs won’t hire me if I don’t own my own car — because what kind of loser chooses to bike?  A lot of buildings won’t allow for bikes to be parked in front of buildings or stored on balconies.  And of course, it’s illegal in many neighborhoods to use a clothesline or other alternative washer/dryer methods.  According to current estimates, over 50 million homes in the U.S. are affected by clothesline bans, mostly in wealthy neighborhoods — ironically, the neighborhoods which are often best able to absorb the extra time and effort costs which green homemaking requires.

A documentary is coming out which addresses this issue, called “Drying for Freedom.”  They’ve disabled embedding on the trailer, but here’s the link on Youtube:

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