I was reading this Yahoo story today and my mind is boggling that there's places that you can't hang out your washing. You can actually get fined for it. I would have thought in this day and age of climate change that encouraging it would have been the norm.

So can you hang out your washing?

And can anyone find the piece that was posted here on the forums years and years ago when one other time we talked about using dryers about how the clothes line woudl tell the story of a family // birth of a baby, visitors and things like that?

We hang our washing out frequently. We have a good old Australian style square clothes hanger thingy that kids like to swing on.

Except that we're all a bit old for that.

But it's nice when you hang clothes out at 10pm and they're dry by the next morning, just because of summer. Yay.

(post may be slightly incoherent because I'm very tired.)

Yeah, isn't that a sad comment on today's society? It's mostly in the suburbs where there may be a clothesline ban. Apparently it offends the esthetics of the area. *rolls eyes* This area being where one house is exactly like the next, as a rule. Perhaps if the residents were to hang identical laundry out, it wouldn't be so offensive. *rolls eyes again* I read somewhere today that the new pastime in North America is 'being offended'. It certainly seems the case here. How absurd!

Personally, I've always liked the sight of laundry flapping away in the wind, not to mention the smell of sun-dried clothes, which can't be replicated by any dryer sheet. I shall continue to dry my clothes on the line until the day I die! Hang 'em high, I say!

I'm astonished at that too. I remember, some years ago now, being amazed that some friends had paid a very high price for a home where they couldn't do as they pleased on their own property. And even more amazed that some people would think of this as a selling point!

For me, it would be a "walk away" - I wouldn't buy a house where a homeowner's association had such power. The green aspect would be a big part of it, but quite frankly the thought that my neighbours felt they had the right to dictate what constituted good taste on my property would count even more.

There's a bylaw in my suburb against having clotheslines, but I've seen some neighbours set up 'temporary lines', to hang big items like sheets, and we have a standing clothes rack that we use during warm weather to hang things that don't go in the dryer or that are too big to hang in the basement. Year round, we hang some stuff up in the basement. Obviously not as efficient as hanging things in the warm sun. My house isn't really built to have a clothesline though. My grandmother's house has one, but she also has a specific little room off the kitchen, with a window to hang out of, right where the line is attached. Even if we wanted a clothesline, I don't see how we'd manage it in our backyard. There's nothing to attach the other side to.

Here in England it's quite common for the leases of flats to have clauses banning the hanging out of laundry, though they might be difficult to enforce.

I don't think any council has actually gone so far as to enact bylaws (city ordinances) against it, but I'm sure some of them would like to. On the other hand, maybe the green lobby will encourage us to cut down on our carbon emissions by using washing lines rather than dryers.

Goodness, I've never heard of laws against it and I find it incomprehensible given that we're all nagged half to death to be green!

I know someone who moved into their dream home in a posh neighbourhood (yes, we do have them in Essex). A neighbour invited her to coffee and said "By the way dear, we don't hang our washing outside here". She didn't stay in her dream house for long.

I use my dryer during the winter, but in the better weather I prefer to hang my washing outside, it seems a terrible waste of money and power to use a machine when the weather will do a better job.

Fancy being offended by the sight of underwear on a line. Perhaps the lady's knickers are smaller and more exciting than her neighbours', and they're just jealous.

My washing goes outside rain, hail, or shine. I dont care what my neighbours think and I'm sure they dont care what I think.
I dont own a dryer and refuse to get one. It is my way of saving the planet - one load of washing at a time!

I do not own a drier, and our washing always goes outside, as we have a covered area which catches the breeze. I cannot imagine being told not to hang out the washing. Doesn't everyone wear knickers?

It is not allowed on our property but my neighbors are all ecologists and would say to hell with this rule.
In France, it was forbidden but dryers were way too expensive so we had a system...only thing was that when the wind blew it off the terrace onto the snooty neighbors' deck, we were cringing.

That Yahoo! story caught my attention as well.

We don't have a dryer, it's not common at all to have dryers over here. Many people who live in houses hang their clothes outside. I wouldn't hang the clothes outside because we live in an apartment, and 'outside' would mean the balcony. And as we live on an avenue where many cars and buses pass by every day, because of the smog the clean clothes would end up dirty after being dried outside (I hate smog! ). So I hang the clothes in the apartment, there's a clothesline in the laundry room.

Interesting! This morning I bookmarked that article to send to my daughter in North Carolina. Two days ago she was telling me that she wants to put up a clothesline at her new house, and I asked if her neighborhood's C&C's permit it. They do.

Don't know if this is kosher, but here's a link to a question I asked about this some months ago at Ask Fun Trivia. Seems, as I suggested to my daughter, many neighbors tolerate an umbrella line but not a cord across the yard.

The first house my ex-husband bought had this ruling in the deeds of the property. In fact I did have a small washing line in a small enclosed area which housed my oil tank and dustbin but felt guilty if I used it, not that you could hang much on it as it was less than a couple of yards in length and was in the shade so pretty much useless. Sometimes in summer I would put a rack out in the sun low down so it couldn't be seen.

I can't remember what I did with most of the washing, I know that I did the laundry by hand as we didn't have a washing machine at first. Sheets I took to the laundry but cannot remember what I did with things like towels. I know I had a spin drier to take the worst of the water out of the washing. I suppose I hung all the washing on a clothes airer to dry.

When my daughter was born we did get a washing machine and tumble drier, the former wasn't plumbed in so I used to have to drag it across the kitchen floor each day and attach the hoses to a couple of taps we had installed in the cupboard next to the sink. The tumble drier was kept in the guest bathroom and an extention lead was used to connect it to the electricity supply as here, like the UK, it isn't permitted to have an electricity outlet in the bathroom, other than a shaver socket. These were just temporary measures due to us expecting to move into our new home soon after the birth of our daughter, unfortunately building problems meant that she was more than nineteen months before we finally moved.

I have the old style clothesline.. two posts, with 6 lines between.. about 4 metres long.. heaps of room, lots of breeze.. the only time I can't hang stuff out is when there is a wind from the south west and there is work going on in the sheep yards.. luckily I am usually involved in it anyway, and its just a matter of remembering to get the washing in before the sheep work starts !

This is amazing to me! I had no idea there were so many places where you couldn't hang washing out! I repeat, don't these snobby people wear knickers?? Maybe their knickers don't get dirty? Weird!

I'm with you, Ren. I've never heard it happening in Australia but maybe it is about in some newer areas or something. I dunno - there just seems something un-Australian about it. LOL

Could that 6% of electricity being used in dryers be correct? If so that is mind blowing!

My subdivision has a Home Owners Association, but it is voluntary and the rules are fairly lax. Many people don't even know there are deed restrictions attached to their homes. The only one that comes to mind is parking boats, large trailers, campers, etc in front or in the driveway for long periods of time. And nothing is usually done about it unless someone complains. I can understand the restriction. A friend lived in a home where the neighbors on each side of her parked huge recreational vehicles - like made over buses in their driveway. She couldn't see down the road because of them.

As for laundry, I hang clothes in my back yard. However, I do prefer to dry my knickers in the dryer. I would not like my neighbors viewing my undies!

There are other very strict Home Owners Associations here, though. They can even regulate what flags one can fly! HOAs can have some pretty strict restrictions, and, one has to pay to belong to them! And it can be required one belongs. That is a turn off for me, right off the bat. I agree we should be able to hang clothes, even if it is just in the back yard. I love the smell of sun dried laundry.

The house that I am talking about was in a group of six and they can be seen for miles around, in fact I am amazed they gave permission for them to be built as they are 'different' and do not blend with the surroundings at all, truly a blot on the landscape. With the exception of two of the houses, the gardens or patios (two didn't have any gardens) were to the front of the houses. Although it was inconvenient I did accept the ruling and could see why it was in place.

No one had to buy one of those houses, most houses had no such conditions attached. If you didn't like it then buy another house.

I live in an apartment in a conservation area of a town centre. Although we own our own properties they are leasehold and we manage them ourselves via an elected committee. The lease regulations and conditions run to nearly a hundred items! Schedules 1 to 3 deal with rights, repairs, fixtures and decorating (such as being supposed to completely repaint our flats internally every five years - yeah, right!) There are twenty regulations within Schedule 4 with which we must comply. Some of these we all disregard - such as, "not to place outside any flower box, pot or other like object". I often break the rules by not complying with "not to shake any mats, broom or other articles out of the window" and 'not to use any television or radio between the hours of eleven pm and eight am". Hanging washing out is not allowed, but I sometimes put my rack on the balcony but nobody can see it except me. There are rules about emptying rubbish daily, decorating, window cleaning, parking, pets, aerials, and what we can put down the toilet. There is even a regulation about 'immoral acts'!

I suppose they were originally instigated to make it a pleasant place to live and you cannot rely on consideration for others being uppermost in everyone's mind so legislation is needed. But some are ridiculously intrusive and controlling. Luckily, we interpret them to suit us, and they would only be acted upon should someone cause a real nuisance. In seven years, I've not heard of anyone being "told off", other than a note to everyone about the bins when someone kept leaving the lid open and we got rats.

I did at first (and still do to some extent, eg when I want to play loud music at midnight or vaccum at 2 am - being an insomniac) find it stifling and sometimes I threaten to move home, but the pros outnumber the cons everytime, so I'm still here!

Edited - omitted word.

The town we lived in in the USA had the wash line restriction law. It was the first time I had ever heard of it and thought it a bit silly but since we had a washer and dryer and the electricity was not that expensive it never realy bothered me.

A year ago my daughters boyfriend bought a small condo in a large developement and I was horrified to find people hanging their washing over their fences to dry.

I think there has to be some 'measures' in place (especially when people live in large groups, close together) or some people will do whatever they like.

We dry our underwear in the dryer, unless it's too hot to heat up the house (which it commonly is)
It's not because we don't want neighbours seeing out knickers - once Grandma hung all of my bras on the line and my boyfriend came over unexpectedly. It's because there are 4 of us in the house and we go through lots of knickers. It's too hard to hang them all out one by one.

I got so used to not using a washing line that I rarely use mine, I just dry my things in the house, either in the drier or by hanging them on the rack.

Where I live, a village ordinance forbids clothes lines on any property. Very silly, especially as most residents have back yards, and our "unmentionables" could not be seen from the road.

I am not surprised by this law, as other felonies include: estate agents/property owners posting "For Sale" signs , "Open House" signs, "Vote For So and So..." during election season, and dumpsters/skips in front of a home for more than one week at a time. One must pay the village $150/week for the privilege of a dumpster rental, and it must be emptied by the contractor every week, or you incur a fine.

Drying laundry outside? Good heavens! How would the utility companies manage to stay afloat if we all aired our clean laundry out to dry?

Maybe underwear shops should stop displaying anything in their windows or inside the shop? How terrible to have to look at knickers.

A family from Lincolnshire just moved in next door. She asked if there was a by-law for hanging clothes outside. I had no idea, I as use a dryer, and anything I want aired out is tossed over the deck rails. She inquired at the town hall and they said as long as it is not along a regional pathway. So she bought an outside line for the back yard. Anchored it in with concrete, it folds down and has a cover when not in use. I like the idea, and may even get one of my own. Seems a lot more eco-friendly and the clothes sure smell nice.